Same-sex relationships may have never been criminalized in Turkey as in many other predominantly Muslim nations, but LGBTQ individuals continue to be seen as depraved or deviant by various social layers and sometimes by those responsible for enforcing the law. And with the alarming rise in anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey, LGBTQ refugees face multifold hardships with potentially dangerous consequences. 

Struggles with social stigma, family rejection, war, migration and unemployment were intertwined in the stories of Middle Eastern LGBTQ refugees that Al-Monitor interviewed recently in Turkey, the country with the world’s largest refugee population. They all spoke on the condition that their names and other personal details be withheld.

M., a gay man from Damascus, recounted how his family banished him at the age of 13 because of his sexual orientation. Still, he managed to get a university degree in French literature and had just begun to feel that his life was coming back together when the war in Syria erupted.

M. said he decided to flee to Turkey out of fear of persecution after an LGBTQ friend of his was caught by Islamist radicals and tortured into giving the names and whereabouts of fellow gays. He crossed to Turkey in early 2015 and rented a home in the border city of Antakya, which he kept open to fellow LGBTQ refugees from Syria.