LGBTI Politics and Value Change in Ukraine and Turkey

Exporting Europe?

Maryna Shevtsova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000375480
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: LGBT Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

LGBTI Politics and Value Change in Ukraine and Turkey focuses on the impact of European Union promotion of LGBTI rights in Turkey and Ukraine, offering a re-evaluation of the mechanisms used by the EU and the domestic and external conditions that result in different outcomes.

With the protection of LGBTI rights becoming one of the core principles of the EU, the last two decades have seen a consistently growing commitment of the Union to defending the human rights of LGBTI people, not only in its member states but also internationally. Drawing on rich empirical data, this work uses the cases of Turkey, a candidate state, and Ukraine, a state in the European Neighbourhood, to evaluate the ability of the EU to promote tolerance and diversity in countries where the population has not experienced a radical shift of attitudes toward LGBTI people. Examining the export of 'European values', politics of LGBTI rights in the enlarged European Union, the development of LGBTI rights in Turkey and the transformation of its political system, competing normative powers and LGBTI rights in Ukraine, Maryna Shevtsova traces the 'Europeanization' of rights beyond Europe.

This book will be of interest to researchers in LGBTI Studies, Eastern European Politics, the European Union and Gender Studies.

1 Europeanization “beyond Europe”

Promoting LGBTI rights¹ in third countries

In the fall of 2013, the streets of major Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, the capital, were full of banners and lightboxes warning Ukrainians about the downsides of closer ties with the European Union, i.e., the association agreement that the Ukrainian government was planning to sign in November of the same year. While some posters were claiming that the association with the EU would lead Ukraine down a path of job losses and rising prices, the others contained schematic pictures of two male and female couples holding hands.² “Association with the EU means same-sex marriages,” warned a pro-Russian non-governmental organization Ukrainskiy vybor (Ukrainian choice) founded one year prior by a Ukrainian business tycoon, Viktor Medvedchuk, often seen as one of Putin’s closest associates in the country. Later in November of 2013, merely a week before the summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the agreement mentioned above was to be signed, President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych declared the suspension of preparations for the treaty between Kyiv and Brussels, an unexpected turn of events for EU envoys. As pro-European groups in Ukraine were expressing their indignation, Mykola Azarov, the Ukrainian Premier, addressed the rally of the ruling Party of Regions with the following explanation of the decision.

Opposition leaders tell tales that if we sign the [association] agreement [with the EU], we’ll start traveling to Europe without visas the next day. Nothing of the kind. We are to comply with the following conditions: we are to allow same-sex marriages, and we are to pass the equality [for LGBTI people] act.³

To a person more or less familiar with what constituted the object of negotiations on visa liberalization and association agreement between the EU and Ukraine, both situations described above would seem nonsensical, if not ridiculous. The situation, however, becomes less anecdotal, taking into account that those claims were, in one case, made by the country’s second-highest public official and, in the other case, backed by an influential politician and oligarch deeply involved in business relations with Russia. The EU officials were quick to react and the next day, the day after the Premier’s speech, the EU’s ambassador to Ukraine, Jan Tombinski, gave an interview to zaxid.net clearly stating:

There are no such demands [to legalize same-sex marriages]. It is not about becoming more tolerant, first of all, towards sexual minorities. We are talking about solving the problem of discrimination as a whole … In the European Union, there are no general principles on how to approach the issue of gay marriages. Indeed, this is an area in which each country chooses its path and makes its own separate law on this issue.⁴

Notwithstanding this immediate refutation, a new link (for the Ukrainian context) between the approximation with the European Union and promotion of rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people in the country survived through almost nine months of an anti-governmental protest in Ukraine, the change of the government, and still persists today.

What could explain this choice of argument by the EU-opposition groups? This book demonstrates, among others, that the whole debate had little to do with real concerns regarding the alleged risk presented by LGBTI rights to the parties involved in the anti-EU campaign but was instead related to financial and political aspirations of pro-Russian groups in Ukraine. By 2013, Ukraine found itself amidst a critical east-or-west moment, and signing the association agreement with the European Union meant seeing the country shift off the Kremlin’s orbit.⁵ Recognizing this threat, the Kremlin started systematic pressure on the Ukrainian government while, at the same time, mobilizing a targeted campaign against the EU presented as imposing LGBTI rights and same-sex marriage on Ukrainians. Russia was portrayed as the bastion of traditional family values and morality.⁶ This juxtaposition instrumentalized by the Russian government has already been discussed in the literature,⁷ and strategic political scapegoating of vulnerable minority groups (gays, migrants, refugees, Roma people) is nothing new. Yet the question remains, why, among multiple other issues, did the topic of LGBTI rights become so salient in the Ukrainian political debate around the country’s foreign politics directions and what impact did the European Union and its politics had for the LGBTI community in Ukraine?

The European Union had, for quite some time, been presenting itself internationally as a global promoter of LGBTI rights. On the web page of the European Commission under the “International cooperation and development” section, it is stated that to promote and protect the enjoyment of all human rights by LGBTI persons is one of the EU’s priorities recognized under the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy 2015–2019.⁸ Yet, how successful is the European Union in its mission? It took almost 20 years in the EU Member States for LGBTI individuals and their rights to receive legal recognition, starting from 1979, when Sweden became the first country in Europe to stop classifying homosexuality as an illness, to the introduction of provisions for combating discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation into the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999. The Treaty, “establishing the European Communities and certain related acts,” enshrined the respect for LGBTI rights in the European Union’s legal anti-discrimination framework, turning it into a part of the Copenhagen political criteria for EU accession.

With protection and promotion of LGBTI rights becoming one of the core principles of the EU, the next two decades saw a consistently growing commitment of the European Union to defend the human rights of LGBTI people, not only in its Member States and candidate countries but also internationally. In 2013, it resulted in ground-breaking news that excited the whole LGBTI community across the world: the Council of the European Union took an unprecedented step and adopted a global LGBTI policy, which instructed EU diplomats around the world to protect the human rights of sexual minorities. With the “Guidelines to promote and protect the enjoyment of all human rights by LGBTI persons,” the EU had once and for all confirmed its ambition to incorporate the international promotion of LGBTI rights in its human rights diplomacy toward third countries.

In the scholarly literature, the EU has received its share of praise for being unique in pursuing its own “civilizing” form of diplomacy⁹ and for having power over opinions.¹⁰ Yet its capacity to promote democracy and human rights in its neighborhood has also been thoroughly questioned.¹¹ Among others, the EU has been blamed for inconsistency in its democratization efforts as well as for a capacity-expectation gap for third countries that damages the international credibility of the European Union.¹² As promoting LGBTI rights globally can still be considered a recent endeavor of the EU, less is known regarding its capacity to push for LGBTI rights in its external relations, i.e., in non-Member States. There are, though, recent findings demonstrating that approximation with the European Union creates new opportunities for political mobilization and transnational networking and activism for the LGBTI community.¹³ Indeed, the last decade was marked by the positive developments for sexual equality in EU candidate countries and its neighborhood. In 2009, the parliament of Serbia, a candidate country to the European Union, adopted a law prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity in all areas of life. In Ukraine, a member of the European Neighborhood Policy, despite long-time resistance, the majority of the MPs voted in November 2015 for an amendment to the labor code, protecting LGBTI people from discrimination in the workplace. The first openly LGBTI candidates took part in municipal elections in Turkey in 2013. With the efforts and financial support of the European Union’s institutions, registration, and work of numerous LGBTI rights, organizations became possible in Moldova, Albania, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, and other non-Member States.

However, in countries where the population has not experienced a radical shift of attitudes toward LGBTI people, one can find multiple reasons to question the ability of the EU to promote LGBTI rights. Some of the more recent studies even claim that the current backlash against LGBTI people in the European neighborhood might be an unintended consequence of the EU’s LGBTI rights promotion strategy.¹⁴ In Ukraine, while the level of homophobic attitudes in society remains high, one can observe a significant increase in homophobic aggression expressed by older and newly emerged radical nationalist groups.¹⁵ In Turkey, in November of 2015, for the first time in 14 years, the Pride Parade was violently dispersed by the police force. In Georgia, the participants of the equality march in 2013 were attacked by thousands of anti-LGBTI protestors led by Georgian Orthodox priests, who mobilized the believers against the adoption of anti-discrimination law, one of the prerequisites for an association agreement with the European Union.

There is, therefore, room for further research on the real influence of the EU in the situation with LGBTI rights beyond its borders. Though Europeanization scholars seem to have agreed on the fact that there are EU-induced effects in third countries’ public policies,¹⁶ there is hardly a general answer explaining various domestic transformations concerning changes in state discourses and public attitudes relating to LGBTI people that seem to be prompted by the European Union. This indicates a need to clarify the nature of such changes, focusing on the roles both the European Union and domestic actors played in those.

This work engages with the external action of the European Union for the promotion and protection of the human rights of LGBTI people in non-Member States. It draws on previous research, having accepted that the EU as a powerful international actor does influence the process of adoption and implementation of newly emerged human rights norms – at least in the candidate countries and states in the European neighborhood. It uses the cases of Turkey, a candidate state, and Ukraine, a state in the European neighborhood, to examine and provide a comprehensive re-evaluation of the mechanisms used by the EU to promote its norms, LGBTI rights and, finally, to specify the domestic and external conditions explaining the difference in outcomes of the EU’s efforts to promote the rights of LGBTI people beyond its borders.

This book suggests the following insights. First, the case studies show that the ability of the EU to promote LGBTI rights derives from the combination of the mechanisms of conditionality, persuasion, and capacity building. The effect of this action, however, is significantly shaped by the reactions of domestic actors – in particular political parties and civil society activists, as well as by geopolitical factors. Failure to take these factors into account unintentionally resulted in a backlash against LGBTI people in those cases.

In this book, I look closely at three mechanisms the European Union uses to promote LGBTI rights in Turkey and Ukraine: conditionality, persuasion, and capacity building. The EU applies these mechanisms in non-Member States on two levels: targeting national governments (persuasion and conditionality) and civil society organizations and activists (capacity building). The collected data proves that none of these mechanisms alone can be enough for a third country to adopt European norms on LGBTI rights. This book addresses the cases when the combination of three mechanisms appeared to be the most effective and brought tangible results for LGBTI people’s rights. Yet each case could not be studied separately from the domestic and regional (geo)political context. The latter makes attempts to reproduce the combination of the mechanisms to achieve similar results quite challenging.

Moreover, the findings of this work reveal that a group of important domestic political actors is systematically ignored by the European Union. A possible explanation for the oversight of national political parties could be that the EU, in fact, limits its own interactions with local political actors outside of the existing national government. However, I show in the following chapters that in multiple cases when the LGBTI community in Ukraine and Turkey faced victories or new obstacles, the agency of the national political parties and power actors behind them was crucial. The analysis of...