bawer
Contributions
About
Bawer, who has been a volunteer for the Lambdaistanbul LGBTI+ Association for many years, worked on organizing countless events and campaigns, especially the Istanbul Pride Week. He was a member of the editorial board of Turkey’s first LGBTI+ magazine, Kaos GL, worked as a reporter and writer for the news site bianet.org, prepared the Derkenar page for the Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos, and later did a radio program on Özgür Radyo, which was subsequently shut down by the government. His short film, Anti-Confessions Vol. 1, which he wrote and acted in, was screened at various festivals.
In 2010, Bawer was awarded the Baki Koşar Award by the Siyah Pembe Üçgen (Black Pink Triangle) LGBTI+ Association in memory of Baki Koşar, a gay Kurdish journalist who was murdered in a hate crime. That same year, he migrated to Barcelona, where he was accepted into the Catalan Government’s human rights program. In 2013, the book "Erkeklik Ofsayta Düşünce" (When Masculinity Falls Offside),” which he co-authored about football and homophobia, was published. Bawer’s articles, stories, and interviews have been published in various newspapers, books, magazines, and websites in Turkish, English, Spanish & Catalan. In 2020, he founded Velvele; in 2023, he established Velvele English, and in 2024, he launched the queer literature site devedikeni. Through its podcast and YouTube channel, Velvele transformed into a queer media collective.