After coming out on TV, Halil Dincdag sues football federation over sacking.

Turkey’s football authorities were at the centre of a growing scandal last week after a referee they had sacked for homosexuality and outed to the press began fighting back in the courts and the press.

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

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

His principled stance brought him a wave of support. Three-quarters of Trabzon’s 80 referees rang him up to congratulate him. Thirty thousand people signed a petition launched by Turkey’s most influential newspaper backing his campaign. One columnist even compared him to Harvey Milk, America’s first openly gay politician. Turkey’s deputies brought his case to parliament. Most importantly for Mr Dincdag, his pious family, from whom he had kept his homosexuality secret, stood behind him, the Independent reports.

Read the whole article at the Independent.

Turkey has now the chance to change the lifes of GLBT people in Turkey, hope the people of  Turkey and the parliament use this opportunity to start fighting the widespread homophobia.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons - Darwinek

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