Transgender actor's family stands behind his decision

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet

Rüzgar Erkoçlar has become a man after a gender reassignment surgery. Hürriyet photo

The mother of Rüzgar Erkoçlar, an actor who underwent gender reassignment surgery, has said the family supports Rüzgar in every decision he makes as do those who are close to the family. “Rüzgar did not do anything bad. We have always supported him. However, some of the news has damaged us a lot. Rüzgar never received death threats. But some people are making that up,” Erkoçlar’s mother Sema Erkoçlar told Hürriyet.

Erkoçlar’s mother said, they would like to find peace, and that no one wants to change his or her gender when there is no reason for it. “No one wants to live though the pain,” she said.

In response to accusations that Erkoçlar’s mother raised her children very freely, she said, “I do not think like this. I support freeness in relations. I support my children. I always told them that they can tell us everything. The most important thing is for them not to lie to us. Rüzgar always told me everything.”

Reagarding the documentary “My child,” Erkoçlar’s mother said, “I watched it while crying a lot. These are the things that we have gone though. In the past, we entered shops to buy male clothes to say we are buying them for Rüzgar’s father. This is something coming from childhood, this is natal,” she said.

 “Currently, all the news is being reflected in newspapers because Rüzgar is an actor. I have changed his name on my telephone and am not calling him Nil anymore.”

Noting that at first she wondered whether it was a sin or not, Erkoçlar said, “I am a believer; I do practice religion also and I know this is natal.”

The 26-year-old actress-turned-actor said that throughout his life he never felt like a woman, but instead always identified as a male. Erkoçlar’s mannerisms, the way he talks, the way he walks, and the way he sits all identify him as a man.

The story of how Erkoçlar came to change his gender is a long one, which began at the age of six. “I was not like other girls. I didn’t play with Barbie dolls, but hung out with boys,” he said, stressing that when he was born he was a girl “only physically.”

Before undergoing the operation, Erkoçlar began to take hormones and underwent a series of therapies to prepare him psychologically for the end result of his gender reassignment.