Turkish government steps up its attacks on LGBTI+ citizens

Europe’s leading LGBTI+ rights organisation, ILGA-Europe are alarmed to observe that in the past week the Turkish government has stepped up its systematic attacks on and defamation of LGBTI+ people and calls on President Erdoğan to guarantee the fundamental rights of all minorities without discrimination, as enshrined in the country’s Constitution.

Over the past week in Turkey, both government and government-supported media have called LGBTI+ people a “disgrace”, “dirty” and “perverts”, which has prompted a wave of hate-speech on social media.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held video conferences on Monday 1 February and Wednesday 3 February denouncing LGBT people and praising his supporters saying: “We will carry our young people to the future, not as the LGBT youth, but as the youth that existed in our nation's glorious past.”

On February 2, Justice Minister and the Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu called LGBT people “perverts” on Twitter. The social media platform has since flagged the tweet as violating its rules against “hateful conduct”.

This new campaign takes place in the context of rising hateful rhetoric against the LGBTI+ community by representatives of high-level religious and political institutions in Turkey, as well as actions and legislation attacking human rights defenders and civil society organisations.

Source: ILGA-Europe