Femena strongly condemns the coordinated raids, detentions, searches, and digital censorship targeting LGBTI+ human rights defenders, activists, and civil society organizations across Türkiye on 13 September 2026. We are deeply concerned that these measures are being carried out under the stated banner of “protecting the family,” contributing to an increasingly hostile environment in which LGBTI+ people and those who defend their rights are portrayed as threats to families, children, morality, and social order.
At least 47 people were detained in operations carried out across Türkiye. In Ankara, 21 people were detained in connection with an investigation targeting Kaos GL, one of Türkiye’s longest-standing LGBTI+ rights organizations. Police also raided the organization’s office and the homes of members of its executive and supervisory boards. The Ankara investigation reportedly invokes provisions concerning “obscenity” and alleged violations of the Law on Associations.
The scale of the authorities’ actions extends considerably further. Türkiye’s Ministry of Justice announced that judicial proceedings under the operation concern 162 suspects, nine associations, and 13 businesses across 15 provinces. The operation has been named “Ailem Güvende” (“My Family is Safe”) and explicitly situated within the government’s 2026–2035 “Decade of Family and Population.” According to the Ministry, the operations are being conducted as part of efforts to protect children, the institution of the family, and “social order.” In the same official statement, the Justice Minister used language referring to associations allegedly promoting “LGBT and immorality.”
Femena is deeply alarmed by this framing. The protection of families and children must never be instrumentalized to justify discrimination, censorship, or the criminalization of human rights work. When authorities portray LGBTI+ people and those who defend their rights as threats to the family, morality, or society, such rhetoric risks legitimizing restrictions on fundamental freedoms and creating an enabling environment for further discrimination, harassment, and violence.
The crackdown has not been limited to detention and physical raids. On 12 September, the Istanbul 7th Criminal Judgeship of Peace ordered restrictions affecting the websites and social media accounts of numerous LGBTI+ organizations, activists, journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders. The websites of Kaos GL and Velvele were targeted, alongside accounts associated with numerous LGBTI+ organizations and initiatives.
Among the individual human rights defenders and activists whose social media accounts were targeted by the restrictions are Yıldız Tar, journalist and editor-in-chief of Kaos GL; Levent Pişkin, lawyer and human rights defender; Seyhan Arman, actor and trans rights activist; Zeynep Esmeray Özadikti, theater actor and LGBTI+ activist; and Enes Hocaoğulları, youth and LGBTI+ rights defender. The restrictions also affected organizations and initiatives including the 17 May Association, Pembe Hayat, SPoD, Genç LGBTİ+, Lambdaistanbul, and others.
The targeting of identifiable human rights defenders alongside civil society organizations is particularly alarming. Behind every blocked account, raided office, searched home, and detention is a person whose ability to speak, organize, document violations, build solidarity, and defend the rights of others is being restricted. Taken together, detention, criminal investigation, digital censorship, surveillance, and pressure on civil society organizations risk creating a chilling effect that extends far beyond those directly targeted.
These developments should not be viewed in isolation. They reflect a broader shrinking of civic space in which concepts such as “family,” “morality,” and “social order” are increasingly mobilized against those who challenge discriminatory gender and social norms. For feminist, women, and LGBTI+ human rights defenders, such narratives can become powerful tools of repression: they stigmatize defenders and the communities they work with while presenting restrictions on their fundamental rights as measures of social protection.
Femena firmly rejects this false opposition between protecting families and protecting human rights. Families are not protected by silencing human rights defenders, censoring civil society, or marginalizing LGBTI+ people. The rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, privacy, equality, and non-discrimination are fundamental human rights and must be guaranteed to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or the nature of their legitimate human rights advocacy.
Femena is particularly concerned by the broader implications of using “family protection” narratives to restrict rights-based organizing. Across different contexts, appeals to family, morality, culture, and tradition have been used to undermine women’s bodily autonomy, gender equality, feminist movements, and the rights of LGBTI+ communities. The defense of the family must not become a political or legal framework through which states police gender, silence dissent, and close civic space.
Femena therefore calls on the Turkish authorities to:
- Immediately release all human rights defenders and activists detained solely for their peaceful human rights work or for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, and guarantee due process and access to legal counsel for all those detained;
- End the criminalization, judicial harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and censorship of LGBTI+ human rights defenders and civil society organizations;
- Lift arbitrary and disproportionate restrictions imposed on the websites, social media accounts, and communications of human rights organizations, activists, journalists, lawyers, and defenders;
- Ensure that provisions concerning “obscenity,” “public morality,” the protection of the family, and associations are not used discriminatorily to suppress legitimate human rights advocacy or restrict freedom of expression and association;
- End official rhetoric and policies that portray LGBTI+ people, feminist activists, or human rights defenders as threats to children, families, morality, or society;
- Guarantee a safe and enabling environment in which LGBTI+, women, feminist, and other human rights defenders can organize, communicate, document violations, and advocate for human rights without fear of detention, prosecution, censorship, surveillance, or reprisals; and
- Uphold Türkiye’s international human rights obligations, including those relating to equality and non-discrimination, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and privacy.
Femena stands in solidarity with Yıldız Tar, Levent Pişkin, Seyhan Arman, Zeynep Esmeray Özadikti, Enes Hocaoğulları, and all LGBTI+ human rights defenders, women human rights defenders, activists, and civil society organizations in Türkiye facing censorship, detention, intimidation, and restrictions on their legitimate human rights work.
“Protecting the family” must never become a pretext for restricting fundamental freedoms, policing gender and sexuality, or criminalizing those who defend human rights. Defending LGBTI+ rights is human rights work. It is not a crime.