Turkey: Football Referee, Barred for Being Homosexual, Fights for Rights

27/06/2009 | Writer: KAOS GL

June 26, 2009
Eurasianet, Nicholas Birch

Turkey

"They thought I was an ant that they could crush, they thought I would run away and hide in a corner," said Dincdag, who filed a discrimination suit in early June. "But they have destroyed my life and I will fight them to the end, all the way to Europe if I have to."

A 33-year old from the Black Sea town of Trabzon, Dincdag had been refereeing in the local league for 13 years when he was informed in May that his license would not be renewed. Two days after he complained to the Football Federation about his dismissal, stories about him began appearing in the national press.

Sacked by the local radio station where he worked and forced to flee to Istanbul to spare his family from a media feeding frenzy, he decided to appear on a popular sports program. His face hidden at first, Dincdag, who until then had been referred to only by his initials, came out publicly.

"The day the press started writing about me, I went into a coma, and the day I appeared on TV I died," he says, in his lawyer
Tags: human rights