In Istanbul, police arrested at least fifty people on 28 June during a banned Pride march. The gathering took place despite an official ban by the Turkish authorities, who have for years restricted or prohibited Pride events in the city. According to local and international reports, police intervened when participants assembled in the city center. Activists and participants were surrounded and taken away. Among those arrested were reportedly organizers and journalists.

Pride marches in Istanbul were for many years an important moment of visibility for the LGBTIQ+ community in Turkey, but they have been systematically banned since 2015. The authorities often cite security reasons, while human rights organizations speak of a restriction on the right to peaceful protest. The arrests are part of a broader context of increasing pressure on LGBTIQ+ rights in Turkey. International organizations have repeatedly expressed concern about the use of policing and legislation to limit the community’s visibility and organization.

Although the current repression and systematic bans on street gatherings present a bleak reality, homosexuality is not criminalized under formal Turkish law. Since 1858, the country has legally decriminalized same-sex relationships. In addition, transgender people have had the legal right since 1988 to officially change their gender. In practice, however, these procedures are subject to strict legal requirements, including mandatory gender-affirming surgery, a medical examination, and explicit court approval.

These practical expressions of homophobia reflect the political course of President Erdoğan. In 2023, he described the LGBTIQ+ community as one of the “greatest threats to the family” and directly linked the country’s declining birth rates to homosexuality. That the climate for the community is becoming increasingly hostile is also shown by international data: out of 49 countries surveyed, only Azerbaijan and Russia ranked lower than Turkey in the ILGA report published in May.