Since 12 September 2026, an operation (during which at least 82 people were detained, homes and association offices were raided) and a systematic smear campaign has been waged in pro-government media; aiming at fueling social hatred, creating a siege of moralism and criminalization of our entirely legitimate struggle for LGBTI+ rights.
The judicial reports, interrogation questions, and prosecutorial allegations -which were included in the investigation files and were directly leaked to the press- became the official basis of this manufactured moralism.
The interrogation documents contained allegations such as “child abuse,” “prostitution,” “dark rooms,” and “funding by foreign powers”: claims that could not be substantiated by any evidence, fact, or testimony. Likewise, the research reports included made-up “offenses” such as “undermining the Turkish-Islamic family structure and Turkish-Islamic culture” and “employing homosexual staff and organizing homosexual-themed events”, none of which have any legal basis. By claiming that people (who were found not even to know one another) were acting “with the same aims and purposes,” the investigation manufactured a narrative of an organized criminal structure.
For days, pro-government media attempted to manipulate public opinion with these allegations, which were grounded in neither law nor basic logic. However, all of these baseless accusations that were put forward to “poison” public opinion, have collapsed once the case reached the judicial stage. The Criminal Judgeship of Peace could not rely on any of these grave allegations as grounds for detention, as there was not a single concrete piece of evidence supporting them.
After all the uproar, home raids, perception operations, and media lynching, the detention orders could ultimately only be justified on the grounds of violating the Law on Associations (Article 32/p) and by resorting to allegations of “obscenity”: allegations that the judiciary has increasingly turned into a tool of administrative pressure against LGBTI+ people and organizations.
The allegation of “obscenity”, which is defined ambiguously in the law, is being used as a judicial instrument to impose a single and partial understanding of morality on society and to control our bodies. This approach, which places its own value system above the law, is attempting to punish the most fundamental right of LGBTI+ people -the right to live freely- with fabricated justifications.
Another political strategy here is to associate the LGBTI+ people with accusations of “drug use,” “prostitution,” or various other fabricated crimes, thereby weakening social solidarity, leaving social opposition hesitant, and isolating the struggle.
However, they did not find what they were looking for. And they will not.
The allegation of “activities outside the scope of the association’s bylaws” (based on Article 32/p of the Law on Associations) was invoked merely to secure detention orders. However, by the very nature and by the maximum applicable penalty for this Law, the imposition of detention as a judicial measure is itself a clear violation of the rule of law. Moreover, this allegation is entirely baseless, and the decision was made for political reasons.
As SPoD, we can unequivocally state that all the work we have carried out since our establishment falls squarely within the principles and objectives explicitly set out in our official bylaws:
● Combating discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,
● Developing social policies based on equal citizenship,
● Building legal and social solidarity against rights violations.
SPoD’s bylaws, as well as all of its activities have undergone countless official inspections and they are fully transparent and publicly accessible. Those who are attempting to fabricate a crime could not find a single unlawful element, even when examining the association’s bylaws, and instead, resorted to inventing baseless claims.
Neither those coordinated detention orders nor those moralistic sieges by judicial means will achieve their aims. We will not surrender to these smear campaigns that distort the truth, these political operations carried out by the hands of the judiciary, or the moralistic narratives that are being imposed. The LGBTI+ struggle for rights is legitimate, and it cannot be stopped.
'/%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=small}