Representation of LGBTI+ characters in Turkey's cinema in the 1990s and afterwards

The phenomenon of homosexuality and LGBTI+s, which has existed since the beginning of human history, has been evaluated within the framework of the dominant view positively or negatively from society to society and from period to period. The abbreviation encoded with the letters LGBTI+ is the abbreviation of the words lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex. With the emergence of cinema, LGBTI+s were represented within the scope of the subject of cinema. In the 1970s and 1980s, along with neoliberal policies, LGBTI + people in the heteronormative, gendered and class-based, discriminatory capitalist world order often did not have the opportunity to represent, and according to the periods of cinema, they generally took place in cinema either as an element of comedy or with various negative features as elements of drama and by being marginalized. At the point where the history of cinema has reached today, the representation forms of LGBTI+ people, although they find more representation opportunities compared to before, is an issue that needs to be studied. In this study, because of the increased representation of LGBTI+ people in the 1990s, some form of representations in the five films selected from Turkey's Cinema, in which the LGBTI+ characters included, were examined. A general historical framework was drawn regarding LGBTI+s, and then the concepts of gender and representation were explained and associating with these concepts, the stereotypical representations of the characters in the films were analyzed. This study aimed to examine how stereotypic representations of LGBTI+ characters that are homophobic, transphobic, and marginalizing are reproduced, although LGBTI+ visibility in cinema is a positive step.