I'm going to be real with you Chapos, it's one of the few moments where joy and gratitude made me tear up.

Very Long Info:

Erdogan appointed one of his cronies as a rector to the one of (if not the) prestigious university in Turkey*, and students started to protest, because normally academics within the university chooses the rector with a vote and president appoints the highest voted one through formality. Erdogan apponting his crony brought every kind of student and professor together: Libs, leftists, kurdish activists, lgbtq+ activists, nationalists who think they're leftists because they're not religious and not fash level nationalist etc. basically everyone except hardcore islamists who support Erdogan. First few days protests stayed in the school, students waving flags, dancing etc. Basically lib stuff. NYT has a good article for even more details.

To gain the upper hand in the media and in his base, Erdogan went straight into targeting lgbtq+ groups. Some time into the protests, this image showed up in an anonymous art gallery within the university. Using this as a "they're insulting our religion" pretense, government sent a ton of cops to the university, escalating tensions. Secretary of state posted a tweet, directly targeting lgbt students. The next day, police blocked entrances and exits to school for hours, and i'm not shitting you, arrested 150ish students for violating the curfew(COVID curfew, starts after 9pm). Easy, right? Block them from going home and then arrest them for violating curfew. Now, students and police are clashing in and out of the university, with students from other universities giving direct and indirect support.

Opposition parties(except 4-5 MPs) have been very reluctant to openly support the protests, due to "If we support it, they'll call us pervert lgbt supporters and we will lose votes". It's been their strategy against Erdogan for 15 years, i still haven't seen it work. Spineless dipshits.

Yesterday, Labor Party** president Erkan Bas brought a rainbow flag to the national assembly, mentioning that it was sent to him but apprehended by assembly security and now he has an investigation against him because of it, and saying (i'll translate it horribly):

They are afraid of this, this colorful flag. They targeted our students as perverts. Fanning the flames of discrimination is a violation of both our constitution and human rights. Using state resources to target a part of the population is considered fascism all around the world. Same as the apartheid in South Africa. Same as putting humans in zoos because of their different skin colour in Belgium. Same as writing 'dogs and blacks cannot enter' on buses in America 70-80 years ago. The people who govern this country are in the same state of mind. They call it immoral. The real immorality is working with corporations who steal from the people, who steal the surplus value of the worker. They must stop it, but i know they won't, because they fuel themselves with it. I'm calling on the opposition parties not to let them use religion to divide people, to stand with our youth and our students, and shy away from shallow triangulation for votes

*you get into these universities through a nation-wide exam, ranking higher gives you a priority of choosing, so even though it may have more rich students than the average due to secondary factors like extra tutoring, it's not like the case of ivy league where rich average students can get in through connections

**they have a very small voter base, 2 of their MPs including Bas got in the assembly by getting elected as members of kurdish party and then resigning(not backstab, everybody knew it was going to happen)