A student in Turkey says a university in Istanbul refused permission for an LGBT conference organized by students on campus.

Medical students at Yeditepe University, a private university with 15,000 students, organized a conference called LGBT-Medicine-Ethics, due to be held last week.

The program was to include sessions on problems faced by LGBT people in medicine, gender realignment surgery and LGBT ethics in medicine – but administrators refused the students permission to hold the conference.

‘Even though Yeditepe University has many openly-gay students, it doesn’t have an anti-gay bullying policies to protect those students,’ said a student to Gay Star News.

‘Sometimes there is bullying in campus or dorms, but university does not punish the homophobic perpetrators. Also, the university does not us let hang posters about LGBT issues around campus.’

The student attends another university in Instanbul, BoÄŸaziÃ§i University, which he says is ‘quite gay-friendly’ and protects gay students on campus and in dorms.

Gay Star News contacted Yeditepe University for a comment about the conference but did not receive a response.