If homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey, the homophobic repression practiced by the Erdogan regime now extends far beyond Pride events: it targets LGBT associations, their leaders and their means of functioning.
The pretext is well known, the scale of the operation unprecedented. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-conservative government launched in the night from Saturday to Sunday, September 13, a vast nationwide anti-LGBT+ offensive. Dozens of people were detained across the country during raids targeting community venues, associations and even militants’ homes. All of it was widely broadcast by pro-government television channels, which were able to accompany the police during the raids.
The repression of LGBT+ people is certainly not new in Turkey. Prohibited every year since 2015, Istanbul’s Pride regularly gives rise to mass detentions: in 2022, police arrested for a few hours 400 people, 150 in 2023, 50 in 2025 and the same number in June last year. But these police operations primarily targeted protesters in public spaces, generally released quickly.
Children Have Always Been an Easy Target
The offensive launched this weekend changes in nature as much as in scale: alongside police repression of Pride, there is now a judicial offensive against the very structures of the community. During the weekend, authorities requested and obtained suspensions on X of accounts of activists and LGBT+ organizations. This Monday, especially, Izmir’s judiciary ordered the provisional detention of 16 of the 18 people arrested in the province. Justice Minister Akin Gürlek praised procedures brought against 162 suspects, 9 associations and 13 companies, detailing what they were accused of: the practice of “prostitution”, the production and dissemination of “obscene content”, and “exposing children to this type of content”.
The government has indeed placed the operation, titled “My family is safe”, within the framework of the “Decade of Family and Population”, launched for the period 2026-2035, in order to promote “the family institution and the social order”. These would be threatened by LGBT+ people, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan labels in his speeches as “perverse”, blaming them for the drastic decline in birth rates in the country. Beyond this classic refrain of the international reactionary lobby, the Justice Minister also conflates LGBT+ people with crime: a few hours after the anti-LGBT operation, he announced another large-scale operation against “street gangs”, this time to protect children who are returning to school.
Kaos, an Institution in the Crosshairs
The operation strikes notably at an institution of the Turkish LGBT+ movement. Founded in Ankara in 1994 around a militant magazine, Kaos GL became in 2005 the first LGBT+ organization in the country to officially obtain association status. In three decades, it has developed its activities in media, documentation of human rights violations, research, training and advocacy. This Sunday, police searched its offices in Ankara as well as the homes of several of its leaders. In the investigation against Kaos GL, 21 people were detained out of the 26 sought by the Ankara prosecutor’s office. Among the suspects, 18 are leaders of the association or people accused of administering its website and social media accounts. The prosecutor’s office specifically accuses them of “sharing obscene content online”.
The inquiry also extends to the association’s finances. Deploying specialists in financial crime, the Justice Minister indicated that it has “enabled the detection of high-value fund transfers from foreign public institutions”. On Kaos GL’s site, the association explains: “The judge ordered the examination of all computers, mobile phones, tablets (…) belonging to the ‘suspects’. Authorization was also given to seize password-protected devices or those that could not be accessed.”
Fifteen Turkish human rights organizations, including Amnesty International’s Turkish branch, published a statement deeming “unacceptable to criminalize legitimate and legal activities (…) by mixing them with accusations of pimping or obscenity”. This “mass wave of arrests (…) marks a shocking escalation in repression in Turkey. This imposition of a moral agenda constitutes a flagrant violation of fundamental rights and Turkey’s international commitments and leads the country down a dark path”, reacted on X by Nacho Sánchez Amor, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey. The European Commission also said it was “concerned”, reminding that the country, a candidate for EU membership and a member of the Council of Europe, is obliged to guarantee human rights “regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation”. In fact, accession negotiations have been frozen for several years.
