Experts link Turkey’s LGBTQ+ crackdown to wider authoritarian playbook

A wave of arrests and raids in Turkey reflects a broader rollback of LGBTQ+ rights, experts told DW. They said governments often invoke family and child protection while using LGBTQ+ people as scapegoats during political or social crises.

Turkey’s latest crackdown on LGBTQ+ communities has involved raids on bars and homes, hundreds of arrests and official rhetoric about protecting families and children. DW reported that experts view the actions as part of a wider deterioration in rights, rather than an isolated development.

Koen Slootmaeckers, a specialist in gender and sexuality policy at City St George’s, University of London, told DW that Turkey had pursued such measures before but that the latest campaign appeared more intense. He linked the trend to the rise of far-right politics and to narratives that divide society between “us” and “them” while promoting traditional family values.

Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek justified the crackdown by citing the state’s constitutional duty to protect families and children. Slootmaeckers told DW that references to child protection are common in government actions against LGBTQ+ communities. He said authorities were reviving suggestions that homosexuality and paedophilia are connected, even when that message is conveyed indirectly.

A 2026 report by Civicus, a South Africa-based civil rights nonprofit, said women’s and LGBTQI+ rights were facing an exceptionally broad and coordinated attack. The report identified the United States under President Donald Trump as having shaped the global narrative and cited the criminalization of same-sex relationships in Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago as examples of regression.

Slootmaeckers said the motivations behind such policies were often partly opportunistic. In authoritarian systems, he told DW, leaders may portray LGBTQ+ people as a threat to the social fabric when their political power is under pressure, creating a scapegoat and diverting attention from other crises.

The source also described growing concern in Serbia, where the country has fallen to 29th place in the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association’s Rainbow Map. A European Union survey found that 80% of LGBTQ+ respondents there avoided holding a partner’s hand in public. Slootmaeckers said politicians could use family-values rhetoric and portray LGBTQ+ rights as an unnecessary expense to redirect public attention from political problems. Turkey was ranked 47th of 49 countries in the same annual index, according to DW.