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Bülent Ersoy: The Remarkable Untold Story of a Turkish Icon, Transgender Diva and Unintentional Revolutionary
Posted: 12/19/2012 6:32 pm
By Jimmy Trash
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/network-awesome/bulent-ersoy-remarkable-story_b_2330277.htmlThe unfathomable life story of living Turkish legend Bülent Ersoy is barely utterable without placing this incredible individual in the chaotic epoch in which she blossomed. While Turkey has a reputation for being more liberal in the '70s, attested by the amount of psychedelic music and film from the country in this decade, it was not an easier time to live there. Turkey was a hotbed of war between fighting political factions as well as careless intervention by the U.S. to keep Turkey in a state of conflict so that the Soviet Union could not impress upon Turkey and use it as a gateway to Western Europe. By the end of the '70s it is predicted that there were 10 political assassinations per day, as well as numerous terrorists' attacks by the formidable Grey Wolves (young SS styled fascists) and American agents planting bombs behind the veil of being communists to spark violence and mistrust.
During this period Bülent sang as both a respected singer of the Turkish classical canon, as well as the frowned upon popular style of arabesque. As you will see in the first videos of this collection, he also acted in many films as a young, naive, androgynous heterosexual man, and would be seen in social spheres on dates with women. A Turkish friend told me that during this period he was accepted as a gay star and led a private life that was quite unmolested.
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Bülent's body metamorphosed simultaneously to the regime change; she started to wear women's clothes onstage and had breast enlargement surgery. She was imprisoned for 45 days for revealing her new (and spectacular!) chest at the Izmir International Fair.
Her transition was later completed in Charring Cross Hospital in 1981, and returned to Turkey in the midst of Evran's oppressive rule. After an imaginably painful series of physical examinations, and always stressing the motivation behind her sex change to be patriotic and not wanting to be an illegal sexuality, she was labelled a deviant by the courts of the new regime. The military government closed transgender brothels and forbade all performances by Trans entertainers. Bülent was also denied the right to perform in public, hypocritically under a law that required women to obtain police permission to perform, thus recognizing her new gender. She fought in court until 1983, and when her petition was rejected a final time, she unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide. Later that year she left Turkey to continue her career in Germany, where she continued to act in Turkish films, and also lived in Australia for a while. Her popularity flourished whilst in exile and in 1988 a series of events would allow her safe passage back to her beloved Turkey.
