On 14 April 2021, a group of students from Turkey’s Middle East Technical University (Ortadogu Teknik Universiversitesi, ODTÜ) gathered at a staircase on campus in Ankara. This staircase was no different from any other staircase on the 11,100-acre campus, yet this was the third time in a fortnight that the students had met at the same point, carrying buckets of paint to color the stairs in rainbow hues. Their previous attempts to paint the stairs had been vandalized by the school administration, the colors the students aspired to see on their campus covered in gray and painted with the colors of the Turkish flag. After applying what was now the third layer of paint, the students left the staircase feeling accomplished. Little did they know that the next day, the staircase would be vandalized again.[i]
Who is afraid of the rainbow? The politics of LGBTQ symbols in Turkey (LSE)
Tunay Altay 
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