Across the Atlantic and Through the Courts: Turkish Trans Couples Fighting to Stay Together in America

The last time Ece and Jordan were in the same room, they were eating simit on a bench near the Galata Tower in Istanbul, pretending the flight home wasn't in six hours. That was fourteen months ago. Since then, their relationship has been conducted almost entirely through a laptop screen, a time zone gap, and a stack of immigration paperwork that seems to grow taller every time they think they're close to the end.

Ece is Turkish and trans. Jordan is American, non-binary, and employed as a social worker in Portland, Oregon. They met at an LGBTQ+ conference in Amsterdam four years ago and spent the next year doing the long-distance thing before deciding they wanted to actually live together. What they didn't fully anticipate was how complicated "together" would be to legally achieve.

"We thought the hard part was figuring out the relationship," Jordan says, laughing the kind of laugh that isn't really about finding something funny. "The paperwork made the relationship look easy."

The Paperwork Doesn't Know You

US immigration law has made significant strides for same-sex couples since the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision in 2015 and the subsequent policy changes that allowed same-sex married couples to petition for spousal visas. In theory, binational same-sex couples now have access to the same pathways as their straight counterparts.

In practice, for Turkish trans people, the theory and the reality diverge in painful ways.

The first major friction point is documentation. Turkey's legal process for changing gender markers on identity documents exists but is notoriously restrictive — requiring surgery, court approval, and other conditions that many trans people either can't access or choose not to pursue. This means some Turkish trans people arrive at the US immigration process with documents that don't reflect their gender identity, creating inconsistencies that can slow applications, trigger additional scrutiny, or in some cases, raise red flags with immigration officers who aren't trained to handle them.

Immigration attorney Selin Öztürk, who works with LGBTQ+ clients in New York, has seen this play out repeatedly. "The system is built around consistency," she explains. "When a client's Turkish ID says one thing and their American records say another, the system doesn't automatically understand why. It just flags it. And every flag is time, money, and stress."

Fear Is Its Own Immigration Officer

Beyond documentation, there's a deeper layer of complexity: the fear of visibility itself.

For Turkish trans people who have spent years — sometimes decades — carefully managing how much of themselves they reveal to authorities, the immigration process demands a level of openness that can feel genuinely dangerous. Asylum cases, in particular, require applicants to document their persecution, share intimate details of their lives, and essentially prove their identity to strangers with the power to send them back.

Ahmet, a Turkish trans man who applied for asylum in California three years ago after fleeing targeted harassment in Ankara, describes the process as "being asked to perform your trauma for people who may or may not believe you."

"I had to explain what it meant to be trans in Turkey. I had to explain why I was afraid. I had to explain my whole life to someone who had maybe never met a Turkish person before, let alone a Turkish trans person," he says. "And the whole time, I was thinking: what if they decide I'm not trans enough? What if they decide I wasn't in enough danger?"

Ahmet's case was eventually approved. He and his American partner, who supported him through the entire process, are now building a life together in the Bay Area. But he's clear that the outcome was not inevitable — and that the emotional cost was enormous.

Organizing Across Timezones

As individual couples navigate these systems in isolation, a growing network of advocates is working to change the landscape at the policy level.

The Turkish LGBTQ+ Immigration Support Collective, an informal network operating across New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, has been documenting case patterns, connecting clients with pro bono legal support, and building relationships with immigration attorneys who are willing to develop genuine expertise in Turkish trans cases — not just general LGBTQ+ immigration issues, but the specific cultural, legal, and political context that makes Turkish cases distinct.

Coordinator Yasemin Aktaş, who came to the US on a student visa ten years ago and has spent the last five doing this work alongside a day job, is frank about the resource gap. "There are organizations doing LGBTQ+ immigration work. There are organizations doing Turkish diaspora work. Almost nobody is doing both, at the level of specificity these cases require," she says. "We're trying to be that bridge."

The collective has also been pushing for something more structural: formal guidance from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on handling cases involving gender marker inconsistencies related to Turkish legal restrictions. It's a slow, grinding advocacy effort — the kind measured in years, not months.

Love in the Waiting

Back in Portland, Jordan has gotten good at making the most of the hours that overlap with Istanbul time. Morning coffee on their end, late evening on Ece's. They've learned to cook the same meal simultaneously on different continents, sharing the process over video call like a long-distance dinner date.

They're currently waiting on the next stage of Ece's visa process. The timeline, like most timelines in immigration, is estimated rather than guaranteed.

"People ask if it's worth it," Jordan says. "And I always want to say — worth it compared to what? This is our life. We're not waiting for our life to start. This is our life, right now, in the waiting."

Ece, reached separately by video call from Istanbul, says something similar but arrives at it from a different direction. "In Turkey, I learned to be patient with things I couldn't control," she says. "I didn't think I'd still be practicing that skill from here. But here we are."

She pauses, looks off-screen for a moment, then back. "Here we are."

What Needs to Change

For advocates like Yasemin, the individual stories matter — but so does the systemic picture. The ask isn't complicated, even if the implementation is: USCIS officers need training on Turkish trans documentation realities. Pro bono legal networks need to build specific capacity for this population. And the broader LGBTQ+ immigration advocacy community needs to stop treating Turkish trans cases as edge cases.

"Every couple waiting is a couple that deserves better than what the system currently offers," Yasemin says. "That's not a radical position. That's just basic human dignity."

For now, the couples keep waiting. And the advocates keep building the infrastructure to make the wait shorter for whoever comes next.