A popular adage contends that “every Turk is born a soldier.” Not so Turkish gays, who are barred from mandatory service in the large conscript army because they are “sexually deviant” and so unfit to take up arms. They might consider themselves lucky. An alarming number of Turkish soldiers have been killed recently (24 on October 19th alone), as rebels of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) escalate their war in the predominantly Kurdish south-east.

Yet to be exempted gays must “prove” their orientation. This used to involve photographs of themselves having sex with another man. Unsatisfied army medics have subjected gays to humiliating physical examinations “prodding and poking their anuses supposedly to assess whether they were penetrated or not,” says Firat Soyle, a lawyer for Lambda, an Istanbul-based gay group. Although this practice has subsided, gays must answer intrusive questions about their childhood, such as “did you play with dolls?” Mr Soyle adds that in remote recruiting centres in Anatolia the occasional gay is still pressed to produce “evidence.”

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