Turkey crackdown raises wider concerns over LGBTQ+ rights regression
Reported raids and arrests targeting LGBTQ+ people in Turkey have renewed concerns about the use of family-values rhetoric to justify exclusion and weaken civil society.
Turkish authorities reportedly raided LGBTQ+ venues, association offices and activists’ homes on 14 September, arresting at least 60 to 63 people during operations described as “My Family is Safe”. Human rights groups condemned the action.
The crackdown, reported by Deutsche Welle, has been presented by experts as part of a broader regression in LGBTQ+ rights. Turkey ranked 47th of 49 countries in ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map, which assesses the legal and policy environment for LGBTQ+ people.
Dr Koen Slootmaeckers of City St George’s, University of London, told Deutsche Welle that Turkey’s actions appeared to be a higher-intensity version of a pattern seen elsewhere. He linked the wider trend to the rise of far-right politics and the normalisation of rhetoric that divides society between an “us” and a “them”.
Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek defended the authorities’ position by citing the state’s constitutional duty to protect families and children. Slootmaeckers said similar claims had been used by authoritarian governments to associate homosexuality with harm to children, while positioning LGBTQ+ rights as a threat to traditional family structures.
A 2026 report by civil rights organisation Civicus described attacks on women’s and LGBTQI+ rights as among the most coordinated and wide-ranging in decades. It cited the criminalisation of same-sex relationships in Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago as examples of the broader regression, while acknowledging that the methods differ between countries.
Serbia provides a European example of decline within the rights rankings, falling to 29th place and below the regional average. Groups associated with President Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party have been linked to reported violence against LGBTQ+ people, while a European Union Fundamental Rights Agency survey found that 80 per cent of respondents avoided holding their partner’s hand in public.
Kaos GL, whose offices were reportedly raided in Turkey, described the operation as state-led discrimination, a politics of fear and the dismantling of civil society. The group’s response reflects the concern that LGBTQ+ rights are being treated not only as a social issue but as a test of institutional protections and civic space.
