EUROPE FINALLY FREE AS N. CYPRUS UNBANS GAY SEX

Northern Cyprus, the last part of Europe in which homosexuality remained illegal, has finally repealed its ban on gay sex.

On Monday, lawmakers voted to abolish the criminalisation of homosexuality which carried a penalty of imprisonment for five years.

“We can finally call Europe a continent completely free from laws criminalising homosexuality,” commented ILGA-Europe’s Executive Board Co-Chair Paulo Côrte-Real, who welcomed the news.

“In 1981, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in its historic judgment in Dudgeon v UK case that such laws are in breach of the European Human Rights Convention and must be abolished,” he said, adding that “it took Europe 33 years to completely free the continent from these unjust and discriminatory laws.”

While homosexuality was legalised in 1998 in the south of Cyprus, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, commonly referred to as Northern Cyprus, is a self declared independent state in which gay sex remained criminalised.

Section 171 of its Criminal Code, which was enacted in 1929, barred homosexual acts between consenting male adults. As recently as 2011, three men, including former Cyprus Finance Minister Dr Michael Sarris, were arrested for having gay sex in Northern Cyprus.

Shortly after, the government said that it would agree to repeal the ban, but it has taken more than two years for this to come to fruition.