Velvele started on February 15, 2020 as the personal blog of one immigrant queer person trying to make sense of his life. Right after its founding, in the COVID pandemic’s transformative quarantine days, volunteer editors, writers and translators turned Velvele into a multi-voice queer platform. Now, Velvele has found its place among LGBTQI+-focused platforms publishing in Turkish and it has emerged as a rich archive of the resistance and existence of the LGBTQI+ struggle thanks to the contributions of queers living in, outside, and in exile from Turkey. Velvele is now a resource for academics, translators, activists, and journalists who want to comprehend the new developments in the lives of LGBTQI+ people in Turkey and beyond.

Velvele exists thanks to the volunteer labor of editors and writers, and it makes space for LGBTQI+ activists, organizations, artists, authors, poets, and journalists in Turkey and in the diaspora. With translations into Turkish, we inform Turkish readers about the cultural, intellectual, and artistic productions as well as the struggles of queer people all around the world.

We are happy and excited to be launching Velvele English, a long-time dream of ours. On Velvele English, our first aim is to deliver our original content to LGBTQI+ individuals and allies who do not speak Turkish. We want to amplify the voices of queer people whom the Turkish government has been trying to silence with LGBTQI+-phobic hate and censorship since their attack on the 2015 Pride Parade in Istanbul. We want to be the medium which conveys queer people’s voices, artistic and cultural productions, and most importantly their struggles, to international public opinion. We need your support to realize this.

Location: Turkey

Founded: 2020

Official Website: velvele.net