Site managers and members did not receive any notification from the telecommunications directorate prior to the closing of the sites.

The two internet communities released a joint statement:

“Both sites have a wide variety of content, with sections such as gay news, commentary, film, literature, radio, health and forums. The number of members of both sites from Turkey is around 225,000. The directorate is forcing members of these sites to appeal this decision.”

According to its administrators and members, the sites do not contain any pornographic or criminal content.

(Turkey) A soccer referee has recently spoken out after he was fired for being gay and then outed to the press.

“They thought I was an ant that they could crush, they thought I would run away and hide in a corner,” Said the recently fired Halil Ibrahim Dincdag. “But they have destroyed my life and I will fight them to the end.”

Dincdag, a soccer referee in Trabzon, Turkey, for 13 years, has gotten much support from the country after deciding to come out on a popular television sports program. Three quarters of the 80 referees in Trabzon have called him and given him support while 30,000 people have signed a petition started by Turkey’s most influential newspaper in support of his campaign.

“The day the press started writing about me, I went into a coma, and the day I appeared on TV I died,” Dincbag said in his lawyer’s office to the Independent. “Thirty-three years of my life had disappeared. Since then, I have been trying to resurrect myself.”

Dincbag was fired in March for being gay and shortly afterwards news reports started popping up about him across the country. Though homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey, there is wide-spread homophobia typical of many Middle Eastern countries.

Read the full Independent story here.

The body of Ebru Soykan, a prominent transgender human rights activist, was found in her Istanbul home on March 10. She had been stabbed to death, according to news reports.

Soykan was a member of Lambda Istanbul. The organization said police had refused  rebuffed several times in the month before her murder for an order of protection from a man who had beaten her and threatened to kill her on several occasions.

The man was questioned by police after Soykan insisted to authorities her life was in danger. He was released after questioning several days before the murder. The man is now under arrest for with her murder, but charges have yet to be laid.

Lambda Istanbul and Human Rights Watch accuse police of not taking seriously threats against Turkey’s LGBT citizens.

“The Turkish police have a duty to respond to all credible threats of violence, whoever the victim,” said Juliana Cano Nieto, researcher in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch.

“Investigating violence against LGBT people, prosecuting suspects, and passing effective legislation to ensure equality are all critical to ensuring that these murderous abuses end,” said Nieto.

This was the second killing of a member of Lambda Istanbul in the past year.

In July 2008, an unknown person shot and killed 26-year-old Ahmet Yildiz as he was leaving a cafe near the Bosporus. No one has been charged.

In 2007, Lambda Istanbul twice submitted a file of 146 cases they had documented to the Istanbul Provincial Human Rights Board, many dealing with reports of violence against transgender people, including cases of violence by the police. Several of these cases had been reported to the police but no action was taken. The then-deputy governor of Istanbul told Lambda Istanbul that the governor’s office had found no records of these allegations and complaints in the police districts involved.

“Until an anti-discrimination law is in place to protect the LGBT community and the police take seriously their duty to protect everyone, these murders will continue,” said Nieto. “Turkey cannot continue to ignore its obligations when lives are at stake.”

Homosexuality has been decriminalized in Turkey as part of a move to make the country more liberal as it attempts to join the European Union, but gays and lesbians regularly report they are abused by police and discriminated against in society.

Last April for the second time in a year, police raided the offices of the Lambda Istanbul Cultural Center.

A dozen police officers were armed with a search warrant that said the center was suspected of being a business that “facilitates prostitution, acts as a go-between [and] provides a place for [prostitution],” criminalized under Article 227 of Turkey’s Penal Code.

A judge in Istanbul, with little evidence from the prosecution, found the organization guilty and ordered police to seal the doors.

The group appealed and the ruling rescinding the order was communicated to Lambda Istanbul’s lawyers on Tuesday.

The Supreme Court of Appeals rejected the local court’s decision on the grounds that reference to LGBT people in the name and the statute of the association did not constitute opposition to Turkish moral values.

The Court’s judgment also recognized the right of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals to form associations.

But the case is not over. The case will now go back to the local court in Istanbul. That court, however, is expected to uphold the Supreme Court of Appeals’ decision.

“This is an important decision upholding the rights of freedom of association and non-discrimination,” said  Amnesty International’s Turkey spokesperson Andrew Gardner.

“The judgment should send a clear message to the authorities not to interfere in the legitimate work of LGBT organizations.”

Last year, another rights group, Human Rights Watch, released a 123-page report detailing harassment and brutality against gays and lesbians throughout Turkey.

Human Rights Watch conducted more than 70 interviews over a three-year period, documenting how gay men and transgender people face beatings, robberies, police harassment, and the threat of murder.

The interviews also outline the physical and psychological violence lesbian and bisexual women and girls confront within their families.

Human Rights Watch said that it found that, in most cases, the response by the authorities is inadequate if not nonexistent.

One gay man recounted how another man stabbed him 17 times in an attempted murder that still remains unsolved. A lesbian couple described how their parents used violence to try to separate them; when they turned to a prosecutor for help, he refused, questioning them instead about their sex life.

The report said that Turkey should not be allowed to join the EU until it guarantees it has ended abuses against its LGBT community.