In Turkey, repression against LGBT+ people reaches a new milestone. In mid-September, dozens of activists were arrested during a nationwide operation, then placed in provisional detention. Interview with Ümit Metin, coordinator of Acort, who is trying in France to mobilize the diaspora and warn about this hardening.
In Turkey, repression against LGBT+ people has just moved to a new milestone. In mid-September, a broad wave of arrests targeted militants and associations in several cities across the country, leading several dozen people to provisional detention. A hardening that sits within a broader offensive against opponents and critical voices of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In France, the Assembly of Citizens of Turkish Origin (Acort) is trying to mobilize the diaspora and alert about the situation. Its coordinator, Ümit Metin, analyzes this new stage of the repression.
Pourquoi le gouvernement turc s’en prend-il au personnes LGBT+ ?
Ümit Metin : LGBT+ people are one of the targets of a repression that broadly affects all forms of contestation of power. For a long time, it manifested with particular violence against the Kurdish movement, with thousands of militants imprisoned. It then extended to feminists, to defenders of Armenian or Alevi minorities, to journalists, to activists for civil liberties, and now very strongly to the main opposition party. LGBT+ people are subjected to this same hardening. Pride marches have been banned since 2015, but a few hundred militants still managed to gather each year. Until now, they were generally questioned and then released after a few hours. Today, a milestone has been reached: militants are placed in provisional detention for several weeks. The accounts of many human rights organizations and LGBT+ activists have also been temporarily blocked on social networks. Therefore, one must place what is happening today within a broader context of a return to political control.
Comment comprenez-vous le changement d’échelle dans la répression des milieux LGBT+ ?
It is a form of threat, a way to show how far the Turkish president is willing to go. A presidential election is planned for 2028, but Erdogan’s power was weakened by the 2024 municipal elections, during which the opposition won the country’s five largest cities. In the 2023 presidential election, Erdogan was re-elected only in the second round. The regime thus seeks not only to silence the opposition, but to erase all dissent. This power grab allows the president, his family, and his entourage to enrich themselves considerably, while the Turkish population grows poorer under very high inflation.
L’Europe a cru en la possibilité d’inclure la Turquie dans l’Union européenne, preuve qu’une autre voie était possible… De quand datez-vous la tyrannie de Erdogan ?
Europe believed in the possibility of including Turkey in the European Union, proof that another path was possible… From when do you date Erdogan’s tyranny?
Les événements de 2013 ont été un point de rupture en Turquie. Des manifestations ont éclaté dans plusieurs villes du pays, notamment autour du parc Gezi et de la place Taksim, à Istanbul. Alors que des dizaines de milliers de personnes se mobilisaient, la répression policière a été extrêmement violente : plusieurs milliers de manifestants ont été blessés et plusieurs personnes ont été tuées. Dans la société turque, cela a provoqué une forme de stupeur et surtout une prise de conscience : la répression policière ne visait pas seulement la minorité kurde, elle pouvait aussi frapper beaucoup plus largement. Dans une certaine mesure, on peut comparer cette prise de conscience à celle qui a accompagné le mouvement des Gilets jaunes en France, lorsque certains manifestants ont découvert des formes de violences policières déjà dénoncées depuis longtemps dans les banlieues. Mais les deux situations restent évidemment très différentes et ne peuvent pas être mises sur le même plan.
L’opposition ne pourrait-elle pas faire bloc avant l’élection présidentielle prévue en 2028 mais qui pourrait être anticipée ?
The opposition to Erdogan has been divided since he began a form of opening toward the Kurds. Some Kurdish militants are rotting in prison arbitrarily, sometimes for many years. The government has engaged in talks with the PKK, which could allow the release and return of militants who have not been tried for homicide, in exchange for disarming the movement. But even if Erdogan promises the release of some political leaders, it is not a matter of granting more freedoms to the Kurds, which triggers intense debates.
La société turque a longtemps eu une tradition de séparation de l’Islam et de l’État, qu’en est-il de cette laïcité aujourd’hui ?
First, one cannot simply copy the French model of secularism onto Turkey. Sunni Islam has been a state religion since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, and the state plays an important role in organizing religious life. The Ministry of Religious Affairs has one of the largest budgets of the state, imams are civil servants, and Qur’anic schools are organized by public authorities. Nevertheless, Erdogan is not an Islamist leader seeking to implement a system based on Sharia, but an authoritarian leader who uses religion to consolidate his power and seeks to control all institutions, including religious ones. Finally, the main difference with other countries, such as Iran for example, lies in its nationalism: Erdogan does not seek to abolish borders in the name of an Islamic project, but to reconnect with the power and the heritage of the Ottoman Empire.
Dans ce contexte, quel est le rôle d’une association de la diaspora comme la vôtre ?
We have a duty to alert the diaspora and the French public about the propaganda widely spread, notably on social networks. We are in an informational warfare where we must constantly put things in context. For instance, when Erdogan fuels an anti-Western sentiment by denouncing massacres in Palestine, police violence, or violence against migrants, we must always keep in mind that he is himself an authoritarian leader. We cannot have a double standard of indignation, denouncing what happens in France while failing to express outrage at what happens in Turkey as well.
