Diplomats and rights advocates are condemning Turkey’s crackdown on LGBT organizations and individuals, and protesters demonstrated Friday outside Turkish missions in the United States and Europe.
“We’re calling for the U.S. to tell Turkey to just stop,” said Ben Linden of Amnesty International, which helped organize a protest outside the Turkish Embassy in Washington. “The reason the U.S. needs to speak out now and the world needs to speak out is because this could very well just be the first of multiple waves of repression targeting the LGBTI+ community.”
U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk urged Turkish officials “to uphold everyone’s human rights without discrimination.”
Turkish authorities have raided the offices of LGBT organizations and places frequented by the community as part of a “My Family Is Safe” campaign led by Justice Minister Akın Gürlek. At least 116 people, including 44 rights defenders, have been detained, according to Amnesty International, and more than 180 social media pages and websites belonging to LGBT and other rights groups have been restricted or blocked.
“We won’t tolerate any criminal organization that targets the institution of the family, the future of the youth and social order,” Gürlek said Sunday on social media.
“This crackdown has nothing to do with protecting families,” Amnesty’s Nadia Daar said outside the embassy, “and everything to do with further harming and stigmatizing a community.”
Human rights envoys from six European countries called on Turkey to respect the European Convention on Human Rights, to which it is a party.
Yener Bayramoğlu, who protested Friday in London’s Trafalgar Square, said queer friends back in Turkey fear legislation introduced last year that would criminalize LGBT activism.
“Even without any legislation,” Bayramoğlu said, “it looks like they already started detaining activists unlawfully.”
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