The body of work ?hateroSEXist? came to life because individuals were killed, tortured, and harassed physically and mentally due to their so-called ABNORMAL sexual tendencies or their transgender identities resides within the rage against these increasing hate crimes that have been committed in Turkey recent years towards LGBT individuals. The legal gap in the judicial system does allow the criminals to slip away from being punished in the court of Law and the lack of police intervention leads to failure to prevent these bias-motivated crimes happening.
Human rights violations in Turkey against LGBT individuals have been significantly increasing in the last decade. Not only these violations consist of hate crimes against LGBT individuals, but also do they include discriminatory domestic laws, arbitrary administrative measures, and hostile approach of State officials towards the LGBT community.
LGBT individuals are invisible in the eye of judiciary system. There are significant loopholes that allow judges — mostly male — to reduce sentences of the hate criminals at their discretion. According to Article 29 of the Turkish Criminal Code, “A person committing an offense with effect of anger or asperity caused by an unjust act is sentenced to imprisonment from eighteen years to twenty-four years instead of heavy life imprisonment, and to imprisonment from twelve years to eighteen years instead of life imprisonment”. The Code does not define or set criteria for what constitutes an “unjust act”, leaving it up to the sentencing judge to determine whether an assault or murder was the result of “unjust provocation”. As a result, judges have routinely used Article 29 to reduce the sentences of those who have killed LGBT individuals. As recent as February 26, 2014, a man who killed a trans woman was given an “unjust provocation” sentence reduction from life to 18 years. According to the verdict, the “unjust act” was the victim’s “being a transvestite”
My initial plan for the project was to photograph a number of trans individuals, but 3 months into the project, 3 trans women I was going to photograph were brutally murdered week after week therefore I eventually chose to work with only one individual and create the scenes with her.