Turkey detains dozens in crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists and journalists

Turkish authorities have used accusations of obscenity to justify a wave of raids and arrests targeting the LGBTQ+ community, which has grown to include journalists as well as more than 150 arrested during protests against the raids.

Starting in the early hours of Sunday, Turkish police carried out simultaneous raids on the offices of LGBTQ+ rights organisations and HIV-advocacy groups in the cities of Istanbul, the capital, Ankara, and the coastal city of İzmir, as well as the cities of Aydın and Mersin.

“This is the widest crackdown on LGBTQ+ people in recent years,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, of Human Rights Watch.

Video released by the Turkish interior ministry showed police rummaging through filing cabinets, grabbing rainbow flags and leading people away in handcuffs, as well as raiding nightclubs and the homes of activists.

Prosecutors in Istanbul said officials seized digital equipment, drugs and a firearm, as well as arresting dozens of people in the raids.

Rights groups tracking the arrests believe that 62 people have been held on remand, but more than 100 were detained. Sinclair-Webb, who accused authorities of attempting to smear and criminalise LGBTQ+ advocacy, said: “We believe this includes others not associated with LGBTQ+ groups [detained] for drug and prostitution offences.”

While homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey, prosecutors in Ankara have accused LGBTQ+ rights groups of violating laws prohibiting “obscenity”, and those governing NGOs, although formal charges remain opaque.

Turkey’s justice minister, Akın Gürlek, said the raids and arrests across the country were part of an operation entitled “My Family is Safe” and claimed the sweep was intended to “protect our children, the institution of the family and the social order”.

As a result, Gürlek said, authorities targeted venues they claimed were associated with prostitution, distribution of obscene material “and activities exposing children to such content”.

A Turkish press freedom group, the Media and Law Studies Association, said this included seven members of the executive board of Kaos GL, one of Turkey’s oldest LGBTQ+ advocacy groups that also operates a news site.

Tuğba Tekerek, a journalist, was arrested at her home in Istanbul and taken to Ankara for questioning by prosecutors, after publishing a piece with Kaos GL on the LGBTQ+ community in the neighbouring country of Georgia.

As the initial raids sparked protests, the wave of arrests grew this week. Turkish authorities teargassed hundreds of protesters in İzmir, and detained at least 150 demonstrators in Istanbul on Tuesday as well as dozens more in Ankara.

The French news agency AFP reported that several of the arrests outside a courthouse in Istanbul took place after demonstrators unfurled a banner that read “Being LGBTQ+ is not a crime” and chanted “Long live the struggle for freedom.”

A draft amendment to Turkey’s penal code that proposed prosecuting all LGBTQ+ people in Turkey for promoting behaviour “contrary to biological sex and general morality” was withdrawn last year.

Instead, the Turkish authorities have increasingly targeted LGBTQ+ individuals and groups using broad “obscenity” charges. Eleven leaders of the Genç LGBTI+ [Youth LGBTI+] organisation went on trial last month, accused of violating constitutional provisions on “family values” and publishing images showing same-sex couples kissing, charges that carry up to three years’ imprisonment.

The justice minister linked the launch of the “My Family is Safe” campaign to a directive launched by the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, declaring what he called “a decade of the family and population” and aiming to boost birthrates.

“Our family ties are weakening, the average age of marriage is rising, divorce rates are increasing and as a result, our fertility rate is declining. To be honest, the statistics are alarming for all of us,” Gürlek said.

But rights groups have questioned how arresting LGBTQ+ activists and demonstrators protects Turkish families. Sinclair-Webb said: “Obviously, protecting children and the family is important – no one is debating that – but in a country with a large and concerning record of domestic violence, many cases of child abuse and murders of women, the protection of the family cannot be focused on LGBT people.”