A commentary by the Social Policy, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association (SPoD) of the operations targeting LGBTI+ people and associations on 12 September 2026.
On 12 September 2026, as part of operations conducted under the name “My Family Is Safe”, the police raided nightclubs, LGBTI+ association offices, and homes; and detained GBTI+ people, including association executives and activists. Some of those detained were subsequently placed in pretrial detention, while some were released under judicial supervision.The day before the operations, access restrictions had been imposed on the websites and social media accounts of LGBTI+ organisations.
In the following days, police also attacked the demonstrations organised against the operation. Nearly 150 people were detained during protests across different cities, with some remaining in police custody for more than 30 hours. The operations extended to 15 cities, and authorities announced that legal proceedings had been initiated against 9 associations, 13 businesses, and 162 individuals. Of these 162 individuals, 116 were taken into custody.
The repression of LGBTI+ people certainly did not begin in September 2026.
For years, Pride marches have been banned, LGBTI+-themed events have been legally obstructed, the public visibility of both rights defenders and LGBTI+ public figures has been restricted, and the spaces available for LGBTI+ expression and organising have steadily narrowed.
In recent years, these restrictions have increasingly been accompanied by judicial harassment directly targeting the legal status, leadership, and activities of LGBTI+ organisations.
In December 2025, a prosecutor ordered the dissolution of Young LGBTI+ Association -based on social media posts- resulted in a court order for the association’s dissolution. Criminal proceedings were also initiated against the members of its previous board of directors and supervisory board.
In February 2026, Defne Güzel, Chair of the Board of May 17 Association , faced criminal charges on grounds of “violating public morality” in connection with the association’s publications on intersex rights. Güzel was ultimately acquitted.
Muamma LGBTI+ Association, whose premises were searched during the September 12 operations and whose executives were detained, with two being held in pretrial detention, had also faced various forms of legal and administrative pressure in 2023 and 2025.
Most recently, in June 2026, mass access restrictions were imposed on dozens of social media accounts sharing LGBTI+ related content.
These examples suggest that the operations of 12 September represent not the beginning of a new development, but rather a re-emergence of an ongoing process in a more coordinated and extensive form.
We believe that a significant factor underlying this process is the increasingly prominent family-centred politics of gender and sexuality in Turkey. This political trend, commonly referred to in international literature as anti-gender politics, has taken a distinctive form in Turkey. It positions the family as the fundamental unit of social order while opposing gender equality, the rights claims of women and LGBTI+ people, and challenges to established norms surrounding gender and sexuality. Central to this political framework is the construction of conventional femininity and masculinity, heterosexual relationships, and parenthood as essential components of a socially acceptable life, while positioning LGBTI+ identities and ways of existence as marginals or in antagonism towards this order.
In Turkey, these politics are not limited to the discursive level. They take concrete form through family and population policies, education, the legal system, public institutions, and the media. Policies targeting LGBTI+ people are likewise shaped within this broader framework.
What Does Family Policy Regulate?
The designation of 2025 as the “Year of the Family” and the period from 2026 to 2035 as the “Decade of Family and Population” established the promotion of marriage and fertility, the protection of the family, and population growth as explicit state objectives.
The subject of this politics is not merely private life. They also concern how care, livelihoods, and social security are provided, and who assumes responsibility for caring for children, older people, and those who are ill. Under conditions of economic insecurity, poverty, and uncertainty about the future, the transfer of social care responsibilities onto families positions the family as a primary source of both economic security and social stability.
Yet the issue extends beyond population policy or the organisation of women’s unpaid care work within the household. The family that the state seeks to protect and promote is also constructed as a social norm that privileges particular forms of relationships, gender roles, and sexuality.
Marriage, parenthood, and the heterosexual family are placed at the centre of this norm, while relationships and ways of life that fall outside it may be portrayed as threats to the family order.
The targeting of LGBTI+ people is therefore not only a matter of population policy but also part of a broader political project of regulating which relationships, bodies, and lives are considered worthy of protection and recognition.
What Do Criminal Allegations Construct?
The way in which the “My Family Is Safe” operations were presented to the public also reveals how this political framework is constructed.
The operations involved allegations including “founding a criminal organisation”, “prostitution”, “obscenity”, “possession or purchase of narcotic substances”, and violations of the Law on Associations. In the official statements, the operation was presented as an effort against criminal organizations which “aim to alter the culture of the Turkish-Islamic family structure and target children, young people, and families.”
The way they are presented to the public is itself politically significant, beyond their impact on the legal outcome. LGBTI+ associations and human rights defenders are placed within the same narrative as child abuse, prostitution, obscenity, and drugs- issues strongly associated with crime and capable of generating moral panic.
This language also aligns with the smear campaigns that preceded the recent operations.
Claims that LGBTI+ people pose a threat to children, “promote” particular sexualities, undermine the family, or violate “public morality” serve to portray LGBTI+ identities and the activities of LGBTI+ organisations as threats to society. One concrete example is the legal proceedings against the Young LGBTI+ Association, in which its activities were described as “encouraging” people to become LGBTI+ and as violating the principle of protecting the family.
As a result, the activities of LGBTI+ organisations, including legal assistance, counselling, human rights monitoring, advocacy, and community organising, are framed within a narrative of crime, threat, and moral decay, without any discussion regarding the true nature of these activities or the necessity for such services that arises from the state’s failure to fulfill its obligations toward its LGBTI+ citizens. The name of the operation “My Family Is Safe” complements this narrative: LGBTI+ people and the organizations that advocate for them are being targeted under the stated justification of protecting families and children.
In our view, the issue here goes beyond the language of criminal investigation and involves the construction of a public perception of LGBTI+ people as a threat to society. This perception appears to have been strengthened through the anti-LGBTI+ political discourse centred on the family and social order in recent years.
Repression targeting organizing
With the operation on 12 September, these different forms of intervention came together in a broader, simultaneous wave of operations. On 12 September, after access was blocked to 18 websites and 155 social media accounts, including those belonging to LGBTI+ organizations, operations began that night with raids on homes and association premises. It was announced that legal proceedings had been initiated against 162 people, 9 associations and 13 businesses in operations spanning 15 provinces, particularly Istanbul, Ankara, Mersin, Izmir and Aydın.
In Ankara, police raided the homes of Kaos GL’s full and alternate executive board members and supervisory board members, and searched the association’s premises. In Mersin, the Muamma LGBTI+ Association and the Mersin 7 Colors LGBTI+ Solidarity Association were targeted. In Istanbul, the founding members of SPoD, HEVİ LGBTI+ Association , Lambdaistanbul, LİSTAG, Pozitif-İz Association and the Positive Living Association were detained and police raided the offices.
The repression was not limited to associations. Alongside organizations’ websites and social media accounts, activists’ personal accounts were also blocked. Decisions dated 12 September imposed restrictions on the digital communication channels of Kaos GL, SPoD, Lambdaistanbul, Muamma LGBTI+, Pembe Hayat LGBTI+ Solidarity Association , May 17 Association, HEVİ LGBTI+ Association and many other organizations.
Following the operations, pretrial detention orders were extended across Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin and Aydın.
As of 17 September, 116 people had been detained, and 82 had been placed in pretrial detention:
Fifteen people associated with Kaos GL were detained. Of the 15 people brought before a court with a request for pretrial detention, eight, including executive and supervisory board members and a journalist, were placed in pretrial detention. In addition, five trans women were placed in pretrial detention following the operations in Ankara.
In Istanbul, 20 of the 35 people detained were placed in pretrial detention. Nine of those placed in pretrial detention were associated with organizations: three with HEVİ LGBTI+, two with Lambdaistanbul, two with Pozitif-İz and two with SPoD.
In Izmir, 20 people were detained, 18 were placed in pretrial detention , and two were released under judicial supervision. One of those released under judicial supervision is an activist.
In Mersin, 26 of the 36 people detained were placed in pretrial detention, while eight were released under judicial supervision. Six of those placed in pretrial detention were activists and/or served on the governing bodies of the Muamma LGBTI+ and Mersin 7 Colors associations. One of them is also a lawyer.
In Aydın, six people were detained, one was released, and five were placed in pretrial detention. Two of those are activists.
For this reason, the operation on 12 September was not a mere set of criminal investigations into some associations or people.
The de facto ban on Pride marches, demonstrations and events that we have previously experienced do not represent the same level of repression as detaining and placing an association’s leaders in pretrial detention.
The former restricts LGBTI+ people’s public visibility and ability to come together. The latter targets the institutions LGBTI+ people have established to gather around their own experiences and articulate a political voice.
The existence of LGBTI+ organizations therefore concerns more than the organizations’ own survival.
These organizations are spaces where LGBTI+ people can bring their experiences together, turn them into demands for rights and articulate their own voice in the public sphere.
Criminalizing the organized LGBTI+ movement constitutes a direct intervention in this political capacity.
A new threshold
For this reason, we do not view the events of 12 September simply as another wave of detentions. The repression that had previously targeted different organizations through different legal instruments took the form, on 12 September, of a more comprehensive operation targeting numerous LGBTI+ organizations and individuals simultaneously.
In our view, the background to this process requires us to consider family and population policies, control over gender identity and sexuality, anti-LGBTI+ political rhetoric, and the implementation of that rhetoric through legal and security mechanisms together. These are not identical phenomena; today, however, they operate as mutually reinforcing interventions across different areas of state policy towards LGBTI+ people.
The operations that began on 12 September therefore concern more than how LGBTI+ people can live or how visible they can be in public. LGBTI+ people’s ability to organize around their own experiences, demand rights and speak politically is also becoming a direct target of state intervention.
It is not difficult to anticipate where this new threshold may lead. Inspection reports and requests by prosecutors indicate that the closure of the targeted associations is on the agenda. In other words, the process will probably not end with detentions and pretrial detention orders; it will extend to the organizations’ very right to exist and their legal status. This once again confirms the framework we have set out from the beginning of this text: the target is not individual names, but the space in which LGBTI+ people can bring their experiences together and speak as political subjects.
Yet the politics seeking to shape this terrain also face a contradiction. Family-centred regulation portrays LGBTI+ existence as though it were the result of suggestion or “promotion,” because only when framed in this way can it be prohibited, prosecuted or eliminated through a closure order. But this is not what is at stake: who loves whom, what desires people experience in their bodies, which identities they embrace or what kinds of lives they lead cannot be regulated through an administrative decision or a court ruling.
The state can dissolve associations, block access to websites and prosecute their leaders. But none of this can prevent people from loving one another, desiring, coming together and standing in solidarity. Each institution that is closed down leaves not simply a void, but a new space that will fill that void, because before the institution itself comes what brought it into being.
If the purpose of repression is to make us invisible and keep us silent, our response must be to remain visible with the same persistence: to follow one another’s cases, stand in solidarity as a daily practice, and continue carrying the voices of every one of us whom they seek to silence.
The history of this struggle has already demonstrated this time and again.
Despite being disrupted by bans, closures and detentions, the LGBTI+ movement has always found a way to exist again. It will do so today as well.
It is precisely in the spirit of this historic solidarity and insistence on existing that we emphasize:
- Arbitrary police operations, administrative pressure and the legal siege targeting the struggle for LGBTI+ rights, civil society organizations and activists must end immediately. Closure orders and access restrictions to digital platforms must end.
- All activists, association leaders and rights defenders unlawfully detained or placed in pretrial detention as part of the criminalization operations carried out under the name “My Family Is Safe” must be released immediately.
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