Military service is mandatory for all Turkish men -- they can only escape it if they are ill, disabled or homosexual, BBC reported. But proving homosexuality is a humiliating ordeal。
Those self-claimed homosexual conscripts would be asked questions like if they liked football, whether they had worn women's clothing or used women's perfume。
They also need to provide photographic evidence of their homosexuality. Ahmet, a man in his twenties, gave medical examiners a photograph of him kissing another man and hoped this would give him an exemption。
Turkey's military hospitals still define homosexuality as an illness according to a 1968 document by the American Psychiatric Association。