Rights Groups Demand Türkiye End Attack on LGBTQ+ Community, Free Detained Activists

Amnesty International on Tuesday joined Turkish and other global human rights advocates urging the Justice and Development Party government of longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to end its persecution campaign against Türkiye's LGBTQ+ community and immediately free the scores of activists arrested during the ongoing crackdown.

Police in Istanbul detained at least dozens more demonstrators outside the Çağlayan Courthouse on Tuesday as the protesters demanded the release of the more than 60 people arrested across 15 provinces during and after recent raids on LGBTQ+ rights groups.

Turkish Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said the operation, dubbed "My Family Is Safe," targeted 162 people, nine organizations, and 13 businesses.

“We will show no tolerance for any criminal organization targeting the institution of the family, the future of our youth, and social order,” Gürlek declared at the start of the operation.

More than 180 websites and social media accounts belonging to LGBTQ+ organizations and activists, journalists, media outlets, and others have been blocked or restricted, including Amnesty International Türkiye’s X account.

“This appalling escalation in Türkiye’s crackdown amounts to a full-scale assault on LGBTI rights and those who defend them," Amnesty International deputy regional director for Europe Esther Major said Tuesday in a statement. "The relentless raids, arrests, and demonization of LGBTI people under the spurious guise of ‘protecting the families’ demonstrates why defending LGBTI rights in Türkiye is more important than ever."

“This sweeping crackdown, in which scores of people have been arrested, has nothing to do with protecting families and everything to do with further harming and stigmatizing a community that has battled decades of discrimination and intimidation," Major added.

“This appalling escalation in Türkiye’s crackdown amounts to a full-scale assault on LGBTI rights and those who defend them."

Amnesty is one of dozens of groups that signed a declaration calling on the Turkish government to "stop criminalizing LGBTI+ organizations and human rights defenders."

Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted Monday on social media that "the arrests are allegedly for offenses such as 'obscenity,' prostitution, and drug use, effectively conflating defense of LGBT rights with criminal conduct—all under the pretext of a government campaign to 'protect families.'"

"In fact the arrests have nothing to do with making families safer," HRW said. "Instead, they weaponize the rhetoric of 'family values' to pursue discrimination, stigma, and state repression. Everyone in Türkiye should be concerned: When authorities abuse the criminal justice system to silence lawful expression, they undermine the rule of law for everyone."

"The government should end its crackdown on LGBT rights groups, immediately release detained activists, and end discriminatory targeting of LGBT people and their advocates," the group added.

At the United Nations, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Andrea Bolaos Vargas said on Sunday that she was "deeply concerned by reports of mass raids and detention of LGBTIQ+ human rights defenders across Türkiye, alongside searches of LGBTIQ+ associations and seizure of digital equipment."

"I urge the authorities to ensure the immediate release of all those detained solely for their legitimate human rights work and to guarantee that LGBTIQ+ defenders and associations can exercise their rights without criminalization, intimidation, or reprisals," she added.

Turkish rights groups and activists were the first to condemn the crackdown. A coalition of more than 110 women's groups issued a joint statement against the arrests, noting they came on the anniversary of the September 12, 1980 military coup and subsequent evisceration of human rights.

"Today, on the anniversary of September 12th, we woke up with reports of the arrest of activists and independent rights defenders from LGBTI+ associations for the LGBTI+ movement," the groups wrote. "These operations are nothing more than the actual implementation of efforts to criminalize LGBTI+ organizing."

"It is not a crime to make and organize policies on gender identity and sexual orientation," they continued. "As women, we are against these operations, which are carried out under the name of 'keeping the family safe.'"

“We know that pressures on our bodies, our lives, our identities, and the right to organize are part of the same authoritarian politics," the groups added. "Let our detainees be released immediately, and the raids on LGBTI+ organizations, access barriers, and criminalization policies be put down. We, as women's organizations, are in solidarity with the LGBTI+ movement; we will not give up our joint struggle against male-dominated and authoritarian policies!"

Numerous officials in Western nations also condemned the crackdown, including Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Michael O'Flaherty, who on Tuesday asserted that “mere references to ‘family values’ or ‘protection of children’ cannot serve as legal justification for human rights restrictions."

Leftist Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni said Monday: “I condemn the unacceptable wave of pressure targeting LGBTI+ people and organizations in Türkiye. We demand that these operations be terminated immediately and that everyone who has been detained will be released."

"We will not take a step back from defending civil rights in the face of attacks on LGBTI [people] in Türkiye and around the world," he added. "Barcelona will always be with [them]."

“Mere references to ‘family values’ or ‘protection of children’ cannot serve as legal justification for human rights restrictions."

Under Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has undergone a major shift from relative tolerance of LGBTQ+ public life toward increasingly systematic state repression.

While homosexuality—which was decriminalized by the Ottoman Empire in 1858—remains legal, the government has increasingly used restrictions on assembly, speech, civil society, and public expression to marginalize LGBTQ+ people. The AKP is currently weighing proposals that could criminalize LGBTQ+ identity and activism outright.

Erdoğan has repeatedly demonized LGBTQ+ people, especially during elections, during which he has used homophobia in his appeals to an overwhelmingly Muslim electorate.

As one protester outside Çağlayan Courthouse told The Associated Press on Tuesday, “We are going through a period where there is an attempt by the ruling power to portray LGBT+ people as the cause of every problem in this society."