Raids on gay bars and homes, hundreds of arrests and rhetoric about state responsibility to "protect families and children." Turkey's latest crackdown on LGBTQ+ communities is not such an outlier. "It's not uncommon, we've seen it before," Dr Koen Slootmaeckers, from the international politics department at City St George's, University of London, told DW. "Turkey's been doing this for a while, but it seems like a much higher intensity," Slootmaeckers said.
"We've seen it in different places too. I think what we are seeing with the rise of the far right is a crackdown on anything that looks different. It's really about an us versus them narrative and a reinforcing of 'traditional family values.'" Those values were cited by Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek after the weekend's crackdown: "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!" The reference to protecting children from harm is also typical of authoritarian government actions against LGBTQ+ communities on a wider scale, added Slootmaeckers, whose work often focuses on gender and sexuality policy.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "They're trying to bring back discourses around paedophilia and homosexuality being intertwined. It's not always direct but there is a definite tendency." Sentiments such as those expressed by Gurlek have become increasingly normalized of late, according to a 2026 report from South Africa-based civil rights nonprofit, Civicus. "Women's and LGBTQI+ people's rights are under the most coordinated and wide-ranging attack in decades," the report reads.
It adds that "The USA has set the global narrative" under President Donald Trump and points to the recent criminalizing of same sex relationships in Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago among its evidence of rights regressions. While the methods of oppression vary, Slootmaeckers said the underlying reasons are often, at least partly, opportunistic rather than ideological. "In authoritarian regimes, as we've seen in Hungary and Poland in the past, there is often a tendency when political power becomes threatened to use these issues as an easy way to scapegoat and distract — by claiming that LGBT people are a threat to the social fabric because they challenge family and the future of the nation, so to speak.
It's an easy way of creating a scapegoat and often distracting from other crises," he said. Turkey was ranked 47 of 49 countries in the annual Rainbow Map compiled by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. Countries ranking lower means laws and polcies there aren't LGBTQ+ friendly.
But, for many observers it is countries that are dropping in such rankings that are troubling. It has gradually slipped to 29th spot, below the European average. Groups associated with President Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, have been linked to a wave of violence against an LGBTQ+ community which feels increasingly marginalized.
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