Turkish police carried out dozens of raids and arrests early this Sunday in bars and the homes of LGBT+ activists in the name of protecting the traditional family, announced the authorities and one of the targeted associations.
"As part of the 'My family is safe' operations (...), legal proceedings were initiated against 162 suspects, 9 associations and 13 companies in (...) 15 provinces" including those of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, the three main cities of the country, wrote on X the Turkish Minister of Justice, Akin Gürlek. The minister, according to whom some of those arrested are accused of "obscenity" or aiding prostitution, stressed that these operations are part of the "Decade of the Family" proclaimed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in order to "protect our children, the family institution and the social order."
In Istanbul, police raided several gay bars and a nightclub considered a refuge for the LGBT+ community, according to images from pro-government media. A men's hammam known to be a place of prostitution was also targeted. According to the prosecutors of Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir, cited by the state news agency Anadolu, at least 63 people were arrested. Twenty-one of them were as part of an investigation targeting the LGBT+ rights association Kaos GL, one of the largest in the country, accused of having shared obscene content online, according to the Ankara prosecutor's office.
Kaos GL, whose premises were searched, had indicated earlier that “nearly 50 defenders of the rights of LGBTI+ people (...) have been placed in police custody or are the subject of legal proceedings involving interrogations or police custody” across the country. Kaos GL's X account as well as those of around fifteen other LGBT+ organizations and activists had already been blocked on Saturday in Türkiye at the request of the authorities. 31 additional X accounts were added on Sunday, according to a count by an association defending freedom of expression. The Turkish authorities also made several websites inaccessible and demanded the blocking of several dozen Instagram and YouTube accounts and Facebook pages of LGBT+ associations or activists.
Homosexuality is not criminally repressed in Turkey, but homophobia is widespread right up to the top of the state, with President Erdogan regularly describing LGBT+ people as “perverts” responsible for the decline in the birth rate. “The massive wave of arrests (...) against #LGTBI activists marks a shocking escalation in repression in #Turkey. This imposition of a moral agenda constitutes a flagrant violation of Turkey's fundamental rights and international commitments and takes the country down a dark path,” reacted the rapporteur on Turkey in the European Parliament, Nacho Sanchez Amor, on X.
“Existence cannot be prohibited or hindered. LGBTI+ rights are human rights!”, commented MP from the pro-Kurdish left-wing DEM party in Istanbul Özgul Saki, accusing the Islamo-conservative government in power since 2002 of “seeking to reduce society to a single way of life under the guise of ‘protecting the family’”.
