We have not lost a breath of our excitement while whispering our name to the world, our longing for a better world for ourselves and our fellow travelers, our anger against discrimination and exclusion that keeps us alive, and our determination to fight against the increasing oppression. Here's a look at what we've been doing in this timeline over the years and roads:
Some of what we did was measurable. We followed campaigns, did field research, published publications, set up accessible lines every weekday, provided consultations, conducted monitoring studies, held conversations, trained hundreds of experts from a wide range of professions, met with deputies, mayors, city council members, activism. – we organized schools of politics, we met with the academy with our seminars, we tried to open up a space for queers from all walks of life so that they can produce their voices and words from their place…
Some of what we did, and the most important to us, were immeasurable. There were no announcements, advertisements or indications, the information was within us. While establishing this association and walking this path, we always thought and wanted the most: to connect with tens of thousands of lubunyas from all over Turkey and many parts of the world. Indeed, we have established it. We have heard many stories, and we have told as many. Sometimes we made mistakes, we apologized; We haven't been inclusive enough, we haven't been transparent enough. But we have never forgotten them either; We thought and talked about it to establish our ties again and stronger. We have repaired some of them, and we are still trying to realize some of them. Sometimes, with the feedback we received about the positive change we have created in the life of a queer, we erased all our tiredness and became motivated. In fact, sometimes we were ourselves the queer, we hugged each other with the power of being organized and solidarity.
In the end, we always knew that; SPoD is not just an apartment or a logo. We are queers who constantly raise the LGBTI+ struggle to live in a fair, equal and free world under the rainbow. We are not just a handful of employees and dozens of volunteers. We are with many of our friends and comrades whom we have come into contact with over the past ten years, whose story we have put in our saddlebags, who we have given way and moved on, and with whom we have opened new paths. We are also aware that this path cannot be walked any other way.
As we have done so far, we will come together more, learn more from each other, change and transform, change and transform; We will grow the good and the beautiful with our solidarity. We will seek and finally find ways to live in peace in a country and world that honors the existence of all of us. We will find it. After all, our lives are valuable, because our insistence on living with dignity remains. We will find it, because we want a more democratic country where human rights are guaranteed for all, and we know that we are a large number of people who want this.
We are here with our desires, our loves, our making love, our identities and non-identities, our history, our knowledge, our organized struggle, our institution that we are proud of. Glad we are! Happy and happy tenth anniversary. With solidarity and love to all SPoD friends who are with us, who want to be with us or not, who feel our presence and whose presence we feel, to the queers and the coming decades!
