Coordinated Raids Across Five Cities
Before dawn on Sunday, Turkish police launched coordinated raids on the premises of LGBTQ+ rights and HIV advocacy organisations across Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Aydın and Mersin. Interior ministry footage showed officers combing through filing cabinets, confiscating rainbow flags, handcuffing people and searching nightclubs and activists' residences. Istanbul prosecutors reported the seizure of digital devices, narcotics and a gun, along with dozens of arrests. According to rights groups monitoring the detentions, 62 individuals have been placed in pre-trial custody, while over 100 were taken into custody overall.[S1]
Human Rights Watch's Emma Sinclair-Webb called the sweep the broadest assault on LGBTQ+ people in years. She charged the authorities with trying to discredit and criminalise LGBTQ+ advocacy, noting that those held include individuals unconnected to LGBTQ+ organisations who were detained over drug and prostitution allegations. Although same-sex relations are legal in Turkey, Ankara prosecutors have accused LGBTQ+ rights groups of breaching obscenity laws and NGO regulations, with the specific charges still unclear.[S1]
Government Justification and Legal Context
Justice minister Akın Gürlek characterised the raids and detentions as part of an operation called My Family is Safe, saying it was meant to safeguard children, the family unit and public order. He said the targets were venues allegedly linked to prostitution, the spread of obscene material and exposing minors to such content. Gürlek tied the effort to a presidential directive from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proclaiming a decade of the family and population and seeking higher birthrates, pointing to weakening family bonds, later marriages, more divorces and falling fertility as worrying trends.[S1]
A proposed change to Turkey's penal code that would have made it a crime for all LGBTQ+ people to promote conduct at odds with biological sex and general morality was abandoned last year. In its place, the authorities have stepped up targeting of LGBTQ+ individuals and organisations through broad obscenity accusations. Last month, eleven leaders of the Genç LGBTI+ group faced trial, charged with breaching constitutional family-values provisions and publishing images of same-sex couples kissing, offences punishable by up to three years in prison.[S1]
Journalists Targeted and Protests Met with Force
The Media and Law Studies Association, which monitors press freedom in Turkey, reported that the raids swept up seven executive board members of Kaos GL, one of the country's longest-standing LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, which also runs a news outlet. Journalist Tuğba Tekerek was detained at her Istanbul home and brought to Ankara for prosecutors' questioning after she published an article with Kaos GL about the LGBTQ+ community in neighbouring Georgia. As the first raids triggered protests, arrests mounted during the week. Turkish forces fired teargas at hundreds of demonstrators in İzmir and held at least 150 protesters in Istanbul on Tuesday, plus dozens more in Ankara.[S1]
Agence France-Presse reported that a number of people were arrested outside an Istanbul courthouse after demonstrators displayed a banner stating Being LGBTQ+ is not a crime and shouted Long live the struggle for freedom. Rights organisations have asked how detaining LGBTQ+ activists and protesters could possibly shield Turkish families. Sinclair-Webb remarked that although protecting children and families matters, in a nation with a substantial and troubling record of domestic abuse, numerous child abuse cases and killings of women, family protection should not centre on LGBT people.[S1]
