Lara, a graduate student in the Cultural Studies Program at Sabancı University, conducted an oral history interview with “Kübra”.
Lara:
“[O]ral history methods can provide holistic information about your interviewee and open up a historical context to understand them. This historical context may help the researcher to interpret the interviewee's processes of identity-making, ideology or traumas regarding the past. Here in my case, I will be focusing on identity-making processes and their possible relation to politics.”
“After we spent time we got used to talking to each other and the conversation was less tense. Our interview was before my proposal defense thus my focus has changed a bit after our encounter. If I had done a second interview, with my new focus which is the relationship between lesbian-bisexual intimacies and politics, I would have added more questions regarding this relationship. But since she talked about her own history, I still have some kind of a connection between her activism with feminists and lesbian identity-making process.”
From the interview:
"At an early age, even if not that early, I came out in my early 20s. I had come out, say, during high school, it would have been much better of course, but, even though let's say I have a loss of three or four years, I still feel lucky. Because I was able to come out early. I mean, in a way, because I was able to come out, meet feminists, LGBTs and so on, these things meake me feel..."
"[...] There were times when I was not out to everyone. I had 2 Facebook accounts. One of them was like a continuation of my Lezce profile, through that account I was hanging out with people I met on Lezce. Like a ghost. One profile where I liked as a lesbian, and then a more normal profile. Like all LGBTs, I mean, most of them. I had a period like that, then, as I started coming out, I deleted the other [account]."
In this interview, the interviewee preferred to remain anonymous.