The crackdown on LGBTI+ people in Turkey has just escalated further. On 13 September, a large-scale police operation targeted activists, LGBTI+ organisations and organisations working to combat HIV/AIDS.
The Ministry of Justice states that the operation involved 162 people, nine organisations and thirteen institutions across fifteen provinces. Dozens of websites and social media accounts have also been blocked. The Minister of Justice has condemned organisations that allegedly ‘promote LGBT issues and immorality’, claiming to be defending ‘our children, our young people and our families’.
This crackdown is part of a specific political strategy. For several years now, Pride marches have regularly been banned, broken up by the police and have led to mass arrests of participants and campaigners. The declaration of 2025 as the ‘Year of the Family’ marked a turning point: the authorities began explicitly to portray LGBTI+ people as a threat to the family, young people, demographics and social order. Erdoğan speaks of ‘LGBT perversion’ and ‘deviant trends’ and claims that they ‘undermine the institution of the family’. Draft bills have even provided for prison sentences for behaviour deemed contrary to ‘biological sex’ or ‘public morality’, as well as for the promotion of such behaviour.
Since 2026, this offensive has been incorporated into the ‘Decade of the Family and Population’ 2026–2035. This is therefore neither a one-off aberration nor mere reactionary rhetoric: it is state policy.
Erdoğan’s Islamo-nationalist regime seeks to reinforce, through fear, censorship and repression, the imposition of its patriarchal, misogynistic and homophobic values. It claims to protect society whilst itself fostering insecurity, exclusion and violence. No one is safe under a regime that criminalises identities, organisations, journalists and social movements.
The real threat to people's lives in Turkey is not the existence of LGBTI+ people, nor the struggles for equality, pride and emancipation. The threat is this neo-fascist regime, its politics of hatred, its destruction of democratic freedoms and its determination to reshape society according to an authoritarian, patriarchal and nationalist capitalist order.
We demand the immediate release of all those taken into police custody or detained as part of this crackdown; an end to the prosecution of LGBTI+ organisations and activists; the lifting of restrictions and bans; and a halt to any policy aimed at criminalising their existence and organisation.
We recognize the LGBTI+ people's fear of persecution under current regime and support their quest for safety, including the right to asylum in another country. We urge all countries to open their borders to asylum seekers and stop expulsions.
We call on the labour movement, democratic organisations and revolutionary forces worldwide to denounce this crackdown, to exert political pressure on the Turkish regime and to strengthen their solidarity with LGBTI+ people and all those facing repression.
Defending LGBTI+ people means defending our freedom. In the face of repression, our response must be international, united and resolute.
Statement of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International
16 September 2026