For the first time, a court in the Turkish Cypriot north has sent someone to prison for a crime motivated by hatred of a person’s sexual orientation.

It’s a one-month sentence inside a bigger case. But the reasoning behind it could matter for every LGBTQ+ person living in the north.

What happened

The case was heard at the district court in Trikomo, known in Turkish as İskele, on the island’s east coast.

According to Cyprus Mail, which reported the case on October 14 citing the local paper Bugün Kıbrıs, a man named Ergün Sünmez assaulted and threatened his former wife at her flat in Trikomo in September 2023. A second woman, academic Berna Numan, was there too. He directed homophobic abuse at her.

The court sentenced him to six months in total, Cyprus Mail reports: five months for the assault on his former wife, and one month for the hate crime against Numan. Kıbrıs Postası reports that the 25-page reasoned judgment relied on Articles 35 and 172 of the north’s Criminal Code, Cap. 154, and that the sentences run concurrently.

Local outlets describe it as the first prison sentence of its kind in the north. The international LGBTQ+ rights site Erasing 76 Crimes picked up the story this week.

Why the reasoning matters

Plenty of countries have hate-crime laws on paper. What’s rare is a court actually using them.

The Trikomo court did three things worth noticing:

  • It separated the homophobic abuse from the rest. The court treated the remarks aimed at Numan, which it found could be heard outside the flat, as a separate offence from the insults and threats against the defendant’s former wife.
  • It defined the motive. A hate crime, it said, “requires not merely a general intent to commit a crime, but a specific motive”, rooted in prejudice or hatred about someone’s sexual orientation, Cyprus Mail reports.
  • It named the harm. The court found the words were meant “to publicly marginalise, humiliate, and make [Numan] the object of hostility.” Kıbrıs Postası reports it also weighed her insomnia, the damage to her dignity and the effect on her academic work, and called the remarks not ordinary curses from a routine argument.

That last point is the big one. Homophobic abuse is often brushed off as “just words in a fight”. This court said no: when the words target who someone is, the law treats them differently.

The bigger picture in the north

The north’s journey here has been short and recent. Turkish Cypriot authorities decriminalised same-sex sexual activity on February 7, 2014, the last administration in Europe to do so, and introduced anti-discrimination legislation at the same time, Cyprus Mail notes.

Twelve years later, the gaps are still wide:

  • Same-sex couples have no legal recognition and no right to adopt.
  • Gay men are discharged from the Turkish Cypriot security forces when their sexual orientation is established.
  • The territory is recognised as a state only by Turkey, and its laws differ from those of the Republic of Cyprus in the south.

A single conviction doesn’t change any of that. But laws only become real once someone uses them, a prosecutor brings the case and a judge writes down why it counts. That has now happened.

”Be yourself”

Numan spoke to local media after the judgment. Kıbrıs Postası reports she described the hate-crime provisions as the product of a long social struggle, and said her message to her 15-year-old self would be to be herself, because everything would turn out fine.

It’s a small sentence for a small courtroom. For queer Turkish Cypriots who have spent years being told abuse was just part of life, it’s also a precedent.

Planning a trip to the island? Our Nicosia guide covers the divided capital, including crossing the Green Line.