Turkish authorities launch anti-LGBTQ raids, detaining dozens

Turkish police have detained dozens of people after conducting nationwide raids targeting LGBTQ organisations.

Police swooped on gay bars, offices and homes of activists in major cities including Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Mersin on Sunday, escalating Turkiye’s decade-long hostility towards LGBTQ groups.

State news agency Anadolu quoted prosecutors in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir as saying that at least 63 people were detained, the AFP news agency reported.

Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said in a social media post on Sunday that prosecutors had launched an investigation into 162 suspects, nine associations and 13 businesses to “protect children, the institution of the family, and public order”.

Turkish authorities targeted current and former members of multiple LGBTQ rights and HIV awareness groups. The organisations’ websites were blocked days before the police raids.

Gurlek said the “My Family is Safe” operations on Sunday aligned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 10-year “Decade of Family and Population” executive order, which aims to combat Turkiye’s falling birthrate.

“As per the duty to protect families and children given to the state by the constitution, no criminal organization, abuse network or illegal activity which targets children, youths or families will be tolerated!” Gurlek wrote on X.

LGBTQ rights organisation Kaos GL, whose offices were searched and activists taken into custody, said that “nearly 50 defenders of the rights of LGBTQ people … have been taken into custody or are subject to legal proceedings involving interrogations or detentions”.

Judicial authorities in Turkiye’s capital, Ankara, accused Kaos GL of publishing “posts containing obscenity” online and said that the content was accessible to children, according to the rights group.

Rights activists accused the Turkish government of hardening its rhetoric and restrictions against Turkiye’s LGBTQ community in recent years.

“The real name of this operation is not ‘My Family is Safe’; it is state-led discrimination, politics of fear and the dismantling of civil society,” the Turkish Human Rights Association said on X.

The European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkiye, Nacho Sanchez Amor, condemned the detentions as “a shocking escalation in the repression” in the country.

The governing AK Party banned Istanbul Pride in 2015. Any attempted gatherings since then have been violently dispersed by authorities.