What does “queer joy” means to me

A self-reflection after attending the Global LGBTIQ+ Health Workshop

To myself, and to everyone across the globe who is trying, with everything they have, to make queer lives better – and who sometimes forgets to take care of themselves in the process.

Recently, I had the chance to connect with LGBTIQ+ scholars from around the world, and they inspired me to write this reflection. During this amazing workshop, I felt visible, recognized, valued, and affirmed in an academic setting in a way I had rarely experienced before. Through these encounters, I also found an answer to a question I had been asking myself for a long time: What does “queer joy” mean to me?

What moved me most was not only the knowledge shared in the room, but also the care, vulnerability, and solidarity that shaped every conversation. I felt surrounded by people who understood that research on queer lives is never only academic; it is also deeply personal, political, and connected to survival, healing, and collective responsibility.

This weekend, on 27 and 28 June, before travelling to Strasbourg for my first EASP conference, I am staying in Basel, Switzerland. These dates also happen to coincide with Basel Pride and Lausanne Pride, as well as Pride events in my home country, Türkiye, including İzmir Pride and İstanbul Pride. Being here, at this particular moment, reminded me of the first Pride parade I attended at my home university, Middle East Technical University, in 2022, when I was 21 years old.

At that time, I was yearning to be part of something bigger: a group of people making a statement simply by existing as their queer selves. I was excited to finally feel comfortable and courageous enough to take part in Pride, hoping to experience queer joy. But everything changed very quickly. With excessive police violence, what was supposed to be a moment of visibility and togetherness turned into fear, running, and uncertainty. By chance, I escaped arrest on my own campus by only a few seconds. Later that night, I found myself waiting for my friends to be released from custody, moving between three different locations until they were finally released in the morning. That was my first and last Pride in Türkiye.

Four years later, in 2026, we are still waiting for the final court decision. The outcome may include prison sentences, monetary fines, or, in the best-case scenario, acquittal. Yet the process has already changed many lives and continues to affect us. Many people I know have been forced to migrate, seek asylum, or rebuild their lives elsewhere. Some have faced deportation to their home countries. For many of us, Pride was never only a celebration. It was also a reminder of what it costs to advocate for queer rights.

As a queer person who was born and lived in Ankara, Türkiye, for most of my life, I moved to the Netherlands for my master’s degree, but also, more importantly, for the possibility of living under conditions where I could exist with dignity and be my authentic self. At first, I felt euphoric. I was in a place that was comparatively safer for queer people, where I could exist without constantly monitoring myself in order to avoid possible discrimination. After a while, this safety net became my “normal.”

And perhaps that is where my conflict began.

For the last two years, I have carried mixed feelings about where I stand. I have felt grateful for the chance to move, but also guilty about the privilege of being able to leave. I have asked myself what it means to be safe when so many others are not. I have wondered how to hold joy, anger, and grief at the same time. I felt as if I had left “my people” behind.

In Türkiye, I was privileged enough to study at a university that provided safer spaces for queer people and had a history of strong activism for equality and equity for minoritized communities. Over five years, that space shaped me as a person, researcher, and activist. Still, it has always been difficult for me to feel comfortable identifying as an activist. I was mostly interested in research, and I often felt that I was not doing enough to advocate for queer people because I was afraid of getting hurt physically, socially, and legally. I was surrounded by people who did what they preached in the streets, who were visible, and who risked their lives for the cause they believed in. I admired them deeply, but I also struggled to place myself within that struggle.

I had been trying to navigate these ambivalent feelings for a while. This week, something shifted for me. During the workshop, I had the honor of meeting people from across six continents and more than 70 countries. The insights and lived experiences they shared with me were transformative, and I want to hold on to some of them.

I met a lovely researcher who also works on forced migration. They spoke about how frustrating, personal, and demotivating it can be to research something that is also connected to your own life. I felt sincere compassion for them. Yet, as a queer Turkish person who also felt forced to migrate to escape oppression, and who is trying to find his place and prove his worth in Dutch academia as a first-generation university student with a non-EU background, I realized that I rarely show the same compassion to myself.

Then it hit me: I can be compassionate and understanding toward myself, too.

I also had the chance to speak with another scholar whom I have admired for a long time. They shared similar conflicts about moving to Europe from the United States because of the increasingly hostile climate for queer people there. Hearing this reminded me that these feelings are not only personal; they are political, collective, and shared across borders. Queer people are constantly negotiating safety, belonging, responsibility, and survival in different forms.

In a very moving closing ceremony talk, one scholar said that their most important takeaway from the workshop was the co-created knowledge they hoped to pass on to their students: students who look up to them, learn from them, and perhaps need the kind of representation they once needed themselves. This message stayed with me deeply. It inspired me to do my best to become the kind of representation I yearned for during my bachelor’s years in Türkiye: queer representation in Turkish academia that cares for queer people, not as an afterthought, but as a commitment.

In another conversation, while I was sharing my conflicting feelings, someone stopped me and said, “Nobody wants to lose their privilege.” Later, my dear supervisor, who has supported me for many years, reminded me that we can decide what we do with our privilege. We can choose to be gatekeepers, or we can choose to be gate openers for others with the platform that privilege provides.

I am so grateful for every interaction this workshop made possible. The messages I will take home are these: I will allow myself to rest. I will not feel guilty for surviving. I will practice and promote queer joy in any form it can take. I will accept that queer joy does not erase my responsibility toward my global queer community. I will become a gate opener for others. I will recognize that my pain, my traumas, and my fears are also worthy of care.

Today, I felt queer joy in my own way. I hope to experience and practice it more often. For me, queer joy means taking the negative together with the positive. It means giving myself space to heal my own traumas, to enjoy the wins even when they are small, and to uplift each other in whatever ways we can. It means remembering why I am proud of my queer identity, even when the world tries to turn that pride into fear.

If even one person reads this and feels seen or recognizes something of themselves in my words, that would mean the most to me. I hope we can all find our own ways to practice queer joy whenever and wherever we get the chance.

Tabea showed me how good it can get when you dream big. So my dream is to use whatever platform and influence I have, however small, and to strive, in my own academic way, to advocate for underrepresented queer communities, especially in Türkiye, until no one is left behind.

I will keep reminding myself that we are in this together. With the platform I have, I want others who feel this weariness to know that they are not alone. There is no liberation from oppression and hate alone: either all of us together, or none of us.

Mertcan Mutlu

28.06.2026

Basel, Switzerland