Version imprimableDozens of websites and social media accounts have also been blocked. The wave of censorship is gradually spreading to news websites and human rights organisations. In his statement, Justice Minister Akın Gürlek explicitly equates certain organisations with groups “promoting LGBT and immorality” and asserts that the state will not tolerate any organisation that “targets our children, our young people and our families”.
Criminalising the existence and organisation of LGBTI+ people
The fact that various organisations have received funding from the European Union is also highlighted in the investigations and portrayed in the regime-controlled press as a criminal act. Yıldız Tar, editor-in-chief of Kaos GL, denounces this as an attempt to criminalise the very existence of LGBTI+ people. [2] Tar points out that “all LGBTI+ organisations in this country are registered, operate legally and are inspected several times a year by the Ministry of the Interior. Among the main recipients of funding from the European Union and the United Nations are also public institutions, ministries and foundations close to the government, such as TÜGVA. In that case, are we the ones who become the criminals? ”
Tar emphasises that LGBTI+ people organise themselves first and foremost to protect themselves from violence and discrimination: “LGBTI+ people organise themselves simply so they aren’t killed. They organise themselves simply so they can be treated like human beings. And then you claim that this constitutes a crime.”
Until 2025, repression against LGBTI+ people in Turkey mainly took the form of bans on Pride marches and police raids on gatherings and community spaces, periodically accompanied by humiliating statements from the highest levels of government. [3]
However, a qualitative shift took place with the declaration of 2025 as the ‘Year of the Family’. LGBTI+ people are no longer merely portrayed as contrary to conservative values, but as an organised threat to the family, young people, demographics and society itself. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaks of ‘LGBT perversion’ and ‘deviant trends’ that ‘poison’ the younger generations, and claims that the family is under ‘new-generation attacks’. He has also stated that these trends are ‘undermining the institution of the family’.
This rhetoric has been accompanied by an attempt to enshrine it in criminal law. A draft reform leaked in 2025 provided for up to three years’ imprisonment for behaviour deemed ‘contrary to biological sex at birth and public morality’, as well as for ‘encouraging, praising or promoting’ such behaviour. Attending a same-sex engagement or wedding ceremony could have been punishable by four years’ imprisonment. The draft bill also significantly tightened the conditions for gender transition and provided for sentences of up to seven years’ imprisonment for healthcare professionals who failed to comply with the new restrictions, and up to three years for transgender people themselves.
This draft bill, leaked in the autumn of 2025, was ultimately never tabled in Parliament following strong reactions from civil society organisations in Turkey and abroad. However, very similar provisions resurfaced in June 2026 in the preparatory work for the 12th ‘judicial package’. Following renewed mobilisation by feminist and LGBTI+ organisations, as well as numerous human rights organisations, these articles were once again withdrawn from the package before it was tabled in Parliament. They were therefore not adopted, but their repeated reappearance shows that the government has by no means abandoned this approach.
An offensive set to continue
Since 2026, this offensive has become part of a long-term policy. The government has declared the period 2026–2035 the ‘Decade of the Family and Population’. The official presidential statement specifically condemns the trends towards ‘degenderisation’ which, under the guise of human rights and individual freedoms, are said to threaten the family, future generations and ‘national and spiritual values’. The operation on 13 September, directly presented by the Minister of Justice as an implementation of this ten-year strategy, shows that this approach is already leading to an intensification of repression.
In the face of this offensive – which is certainly not limited to Erdoğan’s Islamo-nationalist regime but reflects the patriarchal and homophobic ideological orientation of virtually the entire international neo-fascist spectrum – the defence of LGBTI+ people cannot remain isolated. It demands the unity of Turkey’s progressive, democratic, feminist, trade union and revolutionary forces against this criminalisation. International solidarity also remains essential: democratic organisations, social movements and left-wing forces abroad must clearly denounce the arrests, bans, the closure of associations and any attempt to criminalise the existence and organisation of LGBTI+ people.
So that we can all shout together, and even louder, just as we do at Pride marches:
‘Get used to it! We are here!’
14 September 2026, Istanbul
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