In Turkey, LGBTQI+ associations and venues frequented by the community were hit by a wave of police raids and arrests. These operations are part of an ongoing campaign from the authorities, with explicitly discriminatory aims and justifications, in contradiction with international law.
18 September, 2026. In Turkey since this past weekend, the authorities have launched waves of police raids targeting the LGBTI+ community, amid a vast campaign dubbed "Ailem Güvende" ("My Family is Safe"). At least 116 people have been detained as part of these operations, 44 of them LGBTI+ rights defenders and at least 82 have since been remanded in pre-trial detention. The majority of those arrested are trans women, charged with a combination of prostitution, drug and obscenity offences as well as violations of the Law on Associations. At least 125 additional people were detained across Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir following protests in support of the initial victims of the crackdown. Solidarity with LGBTI+ communities has also been censored through restrictions on the social media accounts of journalists and activists.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and its member organisation in Turkey - İnsan Hakları Derneği (IHD) - denounce in the strongest terms these arrests and demand the immediate dropping of all prosecutions based on discriminatory accusations. They urge International actors to react strongly to Turkey’s broader anti LGBTQI+ turn and its infringement of international human rights law, including freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of peaceful assembly (UN, Council of Europe), as well as its political commitments (EU accession) and economic commitments (OECD standards and policies).
“Faced with these unacceptable violations, and with no prospect of any backing down nor reparations from the authorities, the EU must firmly acknowledge Turkey’s incompatibility with the values of the Union and therefore place an indefinite hold on its accession process by immediately stopping the pre-accession funding.” commented Alexis Deswaef, FIDH President.
Turkey has seen a sustained erosion of freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly in recent years, with LGBTI+ people and organisations among the primary targets. "Obscenity" and "child protection" laws have been weaponized to effectively criminalise LGBTQI+ people’s existence. Pressures on civil society are rampant, with surveillance, police and judicial harassment, political banning and dissolutions enacted on any opposition, real or perceived.
The LGBTI+ community has become a regular fixation for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who recently pronounced the next ten years as the "Decade of Family and Population". No concept of "family values" should be used as a tool to justify an ever increasingly authoritarian and conservative power in Turkey.
FIDH and IHD urge Turkish authorities to immediately release all individuals detained in the framework of this operation and to put an end to the criminalisation of LGBTI+ civil society. They call on international actors, in particular the European Union, the Council of Europe and United Nations mechanisms, to firmly condemn the raids and detentions carried out by Turkish authorities.
