Police fire tear gas in Istanbul to disperse LGBT Pride activists

A German lawmaker and a member of the European Parliament were also briefly detained while police chased activists into side streets and blocked them from gathering and reading out a statement, saying it was banned. 

Organizers called off the annual Gay Pride march, carried out largely peacefully since 2003, after authorities refused to permit the event, deploying instead hundreds of riot police near Taksim Square. 

Volker Beck, a member of the German Bundestag and a veteran gay rights activist, was among those briefly detained. Two other German citizens were also detained. 

“They did nothing wrong. They were put into a police car,” he told Reuters as police officers once again tried to force him into a taxi telling him he should hold his news conference in his own country. 

Beck said Turks in Germany freely demonstrated in the streets of Berlin, Hamburg and other German cities for or against the German and Turkish governments. 

“It is a fair and democratic right in Turkey as well as Germany and I cannot understand that such threatening of an MP can happen in front of the police,” he said. 

In another instance, police issued a death threat against Alberto Tetta, an Italian journalist who was covering the crackdown. Tetta said that as he was showing his press pass, a police officer told him, “Don’t report anything negative about Turkey, or I will shoot you.”

The Istanbul Governor’s Office last week said the march had been banned out of concern for public order. Security in the city is already tight after a series of bombings in recent months blamed on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants. 

But an ultra-nationalist youth group called Alperen Hearths had also threatened violence if the march went ahead, calling it “immoral.” 

Historically the gay pride parade in Istanbul – a city seen as a relative safe haven by members of the LGBT community from elsewhere in the Middle East, including refugees from Syria and Iraq – has been a peaceful event. 

But last year police used tear gas and water cannon to attack participants, after organizers said they had been refused permission because it coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, as it does again this year. 

Some foreign diplomats who had attended the previous years’ events have sent solidarity messages for the Gay Pride week via social media. The Swedish Consulate held a reception while the Norway delegation co-organized a boat trip. 

John Bass, U.S. ambassador to Turkey, posted a picture on his Instagram account showing a rainbow flag flying in the garden of the U.S. embassy in Ankara marking Gay Pride week. 

“It reminds all of us that human rights are universal rights and belong to everyone, no matter who they love,” he wrote.