Fueled by conservative rhetoric from abroad, an anti-LGBT movement evolves in Turkey
In ultra-polarized Turkey, a few thousand people from diverse political backgrounds came together on Saturday, Sept. 17 for the Büyük Aile Buluşması – or Big Family Gathering – a large anti-LGBT rally in İstanbul.
United by unease towards progressive discourses on gender norms and perceived threats to family structures, the crowd was shown a range of English-language videos from mostly conservative Western media.
“Get a life,” an Australia-based Assyrian priest screams in one video shown at the rally. “Everyone knows we came from parents Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
The speech, along with other videos at the event, were subtitled for the Turkish-speaking crowd.
“My daughter was murdered by gender ideology,” explained an American woman in another clip.
Right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh was also featured in two anti-trans videos, where he says: “This is all part of the most widespread brainwashing campaign the world has ever seen” and “They are creating the LGBTI kids.”
Taken together, the Big Family Gathering underlined a shift in discourse against Turkey’s LGBT community – one that borrows heavily from global conservative movements. And while rally participants cited both religious and non-religious reasons for their attendance, Western right-wing talking points seemed to resonate with the crowd, especially on trans and non-binary gender topics.
In contrast to local LGBT pride marches, which have been prohibited and prevented by large security force operations since 2015, the Big Family Gathering and march took place peacefully in Saraçhane, Fatih, where a big stage was set up.
Turkey’s media watchdog also allowed an advertisement for the rally to run on TV channels as a public service announcement.
At the rally, an army of volunteers provided the crowd with free soft drinks and cheese sandwiches. Many attendees were also gifted placards and signs with a variety of slogans, including:
‘First they stole our rainbow, now they steal our humanity’
‘LGBT propaganda is child abuse’
‘Say stop to social cultural terror’
‘Say no to the project to de-genderize society’.
Caps, t-shirts and balloons with the Turkish flag were also handed out.
Anti-Rainbow Coalition
The Big Family Gathering was organized by the Büyük Aile Platform or Big Family Platform, which represents a dozen NGOs ranging from TÜGVA, a youth organization where Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son serves on the advisory board, and MÜSIAD, an Islamist pro-gov business association, to the Kemalist Republican Women Association and TGB, a youth association linked to Vatan Party leader Doğu Perinçek.
Participants at the rally reflected the diversity of its organizers.
“Our religion has informed us that organizations such as LGBT are haram, and it is clearly written in the Holy Quran that these are a perversion,” Salih Dalkılıç said, in response to a question about his motivation for attending the rally.
For ‘perversion’, he used the word ‘sapkınlık’, which is often repeated by Erdoğan when referring to the LGBT community.
“As the Muslim Turkish nation, our religion, our traditions and our customs have commanded us to protect our spouses, our children,” he told Turkey recap.
Religion was not a motivating factor for Nihal Gündoğan, a member of the Republican Women Association.
She described the organization’s mission as to “advocate the progress and development of a contemporary, modern, humane, public and social state” and said that women's rights were important for them. From that perspective, Gündoğan considered the LGBT community as a “threat” and an “attack” against women, children and the family.
“They know no boundaries regarding sexual orientation,” she told Turkey recap, without further elaborating who she meant by ‘they’.
“They reject their innate gender identity as male and female. So they reject gender. They reject what is born. They reject what is normal,” she added.
A more nationalist stance was reflected on Necla Keskin’s sign, which read: ‘Protecting the family is a matter of national security’.
Keskin said it was her first time attending such a rally and she didn’t explain why the family was a matter of national security, but she said she was present out of “solidarity”.
For her cousin Ayşe Keskin, it was a first as well, although she said her children did not supporting her attendance of the rally.
Talking about the youth more generally, she said children nowadays are completely “brainwashed” and that she was against “a program to change children’s sexual orientation”. What this program exactly entailed, she hoped to find out that day.
Many attendees spoke in vague or abstract terms about their worries, though almost all concluded they needed to protect children.
In more concrete terms, the rally’s press statement – which was read aloud at the end of the program – linked terrorist organizations and foreign powers to LGBT propaganda in Turkey, portraying the nation and its family structures to be under siege and in need of more protection from a new constitution.
‘Symbolic signaling’
The Big Family Gathering followed a period of harsh anti-LGBT rhetoric, especially during the most recent election campaign, in which Erdoğan frequently portrayed the opposition as “LGBT’cı” or “pro-LGBT”, often adding the family remains sacred for the AKP and MHP. The rally was also celebrated by several AKP MPs on Twitter.
While anti-LGBT messaging is now a regular topic at AKP rallies, Evren Savcı, assistant professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality studies at Yale University, noted this was not always the case.
In her book, Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics Under Neoliberal Islam (and on the Turkey Book Talk podcast) she pinpoints a moment in 2010, when then-Family Minister Selma Aliye Kavaf said that homosexuality was an illness.
“That was quite a unique statement for the AKP governments that had existed [since 2002],” Savcı told Turkey recap. “Now this is a party line.”
Savcı said she believed the centrality of current anti-LGBT rhetoric showed a party in desperation.
“They are so desperate that they are now joining a very generic global rights argument about how ‘the local’ and ‘the national’ are under attack, which is then reduced to what is considered to be the family,” she said.
But the trend may go beyond rhetoric and culture wars, becoming codified by law, as Erdoğan has suggested the unity between men and women should be protected in upcoming efforts to redraft or amend Turkey’s constitution.
While the possible consequences of such a constitutional amendment are not clear, Savcı believed it would not have a legal effect, pointing to the fact that LGBT associations are already facing closure cases, pride marches are banned and the rainbow flag is “near banned, confiscated everywhere and used as a reason to arrest people or to take them under custody.”
Most recently, Erdoğan complained about the use of "LGBT colors" at the United Nations General Assembly last week. He was apparently referring to color schemes promoting the body’s Sustainable Development Goals.
“I think it’s a symbolic signaling to the voter base and to potentially other conservative governments around the world that Turkey is in alliance with them,” Savcı said.
Savcı drew parallels to Hungary, Poland and Russia, and other right-wing movements in Europe and the US. Further underlining the fact these movements are not unique to Turkey, video messages from ultranationalist Russian thinker Alexandr Dugin and the Hungarian activist Reka Szilagyi were shown at the Big Family Gathering.
What makes the anti-LGBT movement in Turkey different from the global movement, is the “Islamic sauce on top of the same dish,” Savci told Turkey recap.
“I wouldn't cast this as a radical difference from the right wing in Europe or elsewhere, because the right wing in Europe and in the US are very much involved and intertwined with the church,” she said, adding there are many different churches with prominent evangelical influences in parts of the conservative movement.
Opposition reaction
On the same day as the Big Family Gatherings, LGBT activists held their own online event, Büyük Hayat Buluşması or Big Life Gathering, in which a variety of pro-LGBT organizations took part, including LİSTAG, an NGO founded by family members of LGBT people.
“If the march to be held on Sunday, September 17 is a ‘family march’, where are our families in this march? This march is a march that excludes us, targets our children, encourages society to discriminate against them and encourages hate speech,” LİSTAG said in a statement.
Oğulcan Yediveren, general coordinator of the LGBT organization SPoD and attendee of the Big Life Gathering said the narrative of protecting families and children is a relatively new narrative, but made under a false pretense.
“They are not explicitly saying they are against LGBT+, instead they say propaganda should be banned, which is a lie to hide their hostility,” he told Turkey recap.
Yediveren added he was sad to see the anti-LGBT messages in Turkish society, but this was not new at all for him.
“What is making me angry is the silence. That no one is saying anything about it,” Yediveren said. “That worries me more.”
Several opposition MPs joined the Big Life Gathering, including Ahmet Şık from the Workers' Party of Turkey as well as Özgül Saki and Burcugül Çubuk from the Yeşil Sol Party. Tunç Soyer, the CHP mayor of İzmir, was also in attendance.
Admitting he was surprised by Soyer’s presence, Yediveren said there wasn’t any support from other opposition parties, claiming the mayor received criticism from his own party members for joining the online event.
Yediveren also said he expected the inclusion of anti-LGBT references in the new constitution to make life more difficult for organizations like SPoD.
“They can close the organizations, make gender transition impossible or forbid what they see as LGBT propaganda,” he told Turkey recap.
Though this would not stop SPoD and similar organizations, he said, adding, “We will continue to work.”
Despite such pressure, Evren Savcı, the sociologist of gender and sexuality studies, also said she remains optimistic about the future of Turkey’s queer movement, especially after she attended the Pride March in İstanbul this June.
“People stopped believing anything was possible and then this summer they saw that even if it was a small march … people are still trying and actually making things happen,” she told Turkey recap.
“I know it really rejuvenated a lot of people's faith that we will keep organizing and we will find ways to gather and protest,” Savcı added.
This newsletter is supported by readers via Substack and Patreon, where subscribers can get access to our full recaps and reports, our members-only Slack and more.
Turkey recap is an independent news platform produced by the Kolektif Medya Derneği, an İstanbul-based non-profit association founded by our editorial team to support and elevate news media and journalists in Turkey.
Send feedback, queries and pitches to info@turkeyrecap.com.
Diego Cupolo, Editor-in-chief @diegocupolo
Gonca Tokyol, Editor-at-large @goncatokyol
Ingrid Woudwijk, Managing editor @deingrid
Verda Uyar, Digital growth manager @verdauyar
We’re Hiring: Editorial intern wanted (Send us CVs)
Domestic violence proliferates as an ingrained part of family life. in Türkiye. Türkiye has had a Ministry of Family and Social Services for some 12 years. This ministry has been outrageously useless in terms of protecting women or children, the latter also part of the ministry mandate. Child abuse is currently enjoying a growth spurt – 33% increase between 2021 and 2022. Abusers act with impunity. Women fare no better, with one woman killed by a partner, spouse or relative (i.e. family) almost every day of the 365-day year.
How sad, if not ridiculous, to see hatred of LGBT+ choices and gender preferences whipped up to masquerade as support for happy families. And protecting the family 'in the name of national security' rings positively idiotic.