Lamiya*, a 27-year-old lesbian who was forced into marriage to escape her family\u2019s pressures and moved to Turkey, says that the first pressures began in her childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was about 11 or 12. I remember constantly talking to my mother about girls, beautiful girls. I would say I liked a female classmate. One time I said it so much that my mother hit me. For a very innocent sentence.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would come up with different excuses for my family each time. I said I would go to university and then get married, or work first. Sometimes I was forced to meet men my family chose, but I couldn\u2019t say that there was another woman in my life. By the time I turned 22, I had no place left to run. At that point, I tried to reach out to communities I knew from social media to find support and escape abroad. But we couldn\u2019t find support. We thought about going to the police, hoping they might help. The lawyer I spoke to told me, \u2018If the police find out you are a lesbian, they will threaten to tell your family themselves.\u2019 We were trapped. My relatives are conservative; they wanted to force me into marriage. I thought, at least I could move to another country. Hoping to live freely there, I agreed to a forced marriage with a man in Turkey. I even left the country without saying goodbye to the woman I loved.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Azerbaijan, forced marriages, domestic violence, and lack of rights push women toward more dangerous \u201cescape routes.\u201d The patriarchy, supported by the state, creates double challenges for queer women. Women who deviate from the \u201cnational value\u201d model are punished by families and left alone because state institutions normalize and deliberately ignore this violence. As a result, community members are influenced by all these factors, leading to forced marriages, fake relationships, or unplanned migration. They leave the country without any legal or social guarantees, forced to build a life from scratch in unfamiliar societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lamiya tried for a long time to convince herself she liked men to cope with the forced marriage. According to her, after the wedding, she had to live through compulsory sexuality and from that moment on started looking for ways to escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI came to a city I didn\u2019t know. I felt lonely in the chaos. I couldn\u2019t leave the house alone; I thought Istanbul was just what I could see from my window. I lost all my social life and had panic attacks, overwhelmed by these emotions. I had to hide my orientation not only from my family but also from my legal spouse.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Lamiya\u2019s life changed after seeing news about a feminist rally in Ankara. She saw a video of women holding tightly together, so united that the police could not separate them. That was when she decided to find those women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI spent hours researching, asking, \u2018Who are these people?\u2019 Then I found the feminist group. I gathered the courage to attend their next event. When I arrived, I just said, \u2018I saw you on the internet.\u2019 They simply told me, \u2018Come in.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n From that moment, Lamiya\u2019s life changed, and she began organizing with feminist activists. She says she now lives more freely than in Azerbaijan. Yet being unable to return to her home country still makes her feel incomplete:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSometimes I still don\u2019t know if I belong anywhere. I\u2019m safer here, I know that. Whenever I see news from Azerbaijan, I think people live like robots. The lack of hope for my country\u2019s future, feeling alien in the place I was born. It\u2019s very difficult.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Nurlan*, 30, originally from Sumgayit and now living in a small Dutch town, is one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He says he first realized he was gay around ages 14\u201315:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt home, when they saw a queer person on TV, they\u2019d say, \u2018Look at this, is it a boy or girl?\u2019 I grew up with these phrases. I always felt guilty. I tried getting closer to religion, hoping I would change. It didn\u2019t help. I decided to live in hiding. I didn\u2019t want to be pointed at.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI always knew I would have to leave this country one day, but I never imagined I\u2019d face this kind of ordeal. It was late December. I was caught in one of these raids. They called me to a local station under the pretext of a network crime. Until I entered the station, I had no idea what was happening. A tall, dark-skinned man approached and said, \u2018You sent naked pictures to people,\u2019 claiming there were complaints. I was sure I had sent none. In small towns like Sumqay\u0131t, they threatened to expose my family and work, demanding 2,000 AZN. They humiliated me with questions about my sexual life and laughed at my messages. I had to pay to save my life.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n On January 9, he was summoned again and continued to be threatened. Nurlan describes being dragged into a car, beaten, and forced to open his phone, with his messages used for further threats:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI still know people who have been summoned to the police 3\u20134 times under the same pretext. We were at a friend\u2019s place; it was 11 p.m., the New Year holiday had just ended, and we were about to go out into the city. As we were walking quietly, we noticed a group of people in plain clothes following us. Suddenly, one of the police officers shouted, \u2018There they are, catch them!\u2019 We didn\u2019t even realize who was trying to grab us. They dragged us along the ground and forced us into a car. In the car, they tried to silence us by shouting and hitting us. Our knees and arms were crushed. We secretly dialed 102 with our phone, but at that moment they took the phone from us and ended the call. What could we do then? They took me to a separate room, and a police officer named Namiq forced me to unlock my phone. They opened my messages with my partner and took them for future threats. They were hitting us with their fists; I frequently lost my balance, and my hands were handcuffed. They would say to me, \u2018Scream, do you think anyone will hear you?!\u2019 I remember them kicking my body\u2014they hit me so much that I lost consciousness.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When Nurlan first arrived in the Netherlands, he was offered support through programs designed for refugees, but he says that even recalling the events he went through is difficult for him. For queer migrants coming from authoritarian regimes where state institutions are sources of violence, it is not easy to trust a psychologist or social worker connected to the police or government. At first, the very idea of \u201chelp structures\u201d is associated in our minds with danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nurlan says that at the police station, they forcibly pulled down his pants and began threatening him with sexual assault. To break his resistance, they handcuffed him and threw him to the ground while a group of police officers attacked him. According to Nurlan, an older officer who entered the room also began recording the torture on video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After these events, Nurlan was threatened again for money and, unable to pay, had no choice but to leave the country for fear that his family would find out. He says he decided to flee to Europe, leaving his family and home behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen you interact with an ordinary person in the Netherlands, you realize how different the culture we come from is. People here cannot fully empathize with what we have been through.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Azerbaijan, for nearly 30 years, I couldn\u2019t even answer the question \u2018Do you have a partner?\u2019 Here, I realize I am just like everyone else.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cI always hid myself, thinking I was different from everyone else. Over time, I even began to believe that I wasn\u2019t normal. Now I am not in a police state and I am happy to have fundamental freedoms, but I no longer know where I truly belong.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n On December 27, police conducted a raid at the \u201cLabyrinth\u201d club in central Baku, which is frequented by the queer community. According to community members speaking<\/a> to Meydan TV, a total of 106 LGBTQ+ citizens were detained during the raid. Some of those detained, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported the treatment they faced at the Nasimi District Police Station. According to them, they were forced to stand for hours, subjected to physical violence, insults, and humiliating behavior. They were not allowed to use the restroom, and no assistance was provided to those whose condition worsened. At the same time, community members reported that police officers demanded money, applied psychological pressure, and in some cases, committed sexual violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
According to the LGBT+ Media Initiative \u201cQ\u0131y Vaar!<\/a>\u201d, in January and December last year, police conducted raids against queer citizens in Baku and Sumgayit, extorting money from some. Police initially created fake accounts on dating apps to meet community members. After gathering information, they summoned LGBTQ+ individuals to police stations under the pretexts of \u201conline fraud\u201d or \u201cbank issues\u201d and subjected them to physical violence, threatening to expose their personal information to families and workplaces to extract money.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey would tell me, \u2018Scream, do you think anyone will hear you?\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Raids, murder, and a silenced community<\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n