Turkey’s LGBT community says the government’s banning of LGBT events is not only an illegal curtailing of personal freedoms but further proof of the government’s anti-secular agenda, with some saying they are increasingly worried for their safety.

Respondents to a Guardian callout said they thought Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was waging a war against them, and they felt a change in mood towards their community across the country – including in areas where they had previously enjoyed personal freedom.

Authorities in Ankara imposed a ban on all LGBT cultural events on Sunday night, citing threats to public order and fear of “provoking reactions within certain segments of society”. Days earlier, they banned a festival of German-language gay films in the capital city.



Idil, 25, who lives in a small city in southern Turkey, said he was used to the government’s lack of acceptance for the LGBT community, but he feared authorities were now acting on their words.

“I wasn’t so surprised when I heard [the news]. I have participated in gay pride in Istanbul since 2009. The atmosphere was always really peaceful but, in the last years, it became a tour de force of the police. Brutal attacks have already given a clue about what we were going to experience. I think that this is just a start.”

Last week, Erdoğan said empowering gay people was “against the values of our nation”, echoing a sentiment he expressed earlier in the year after cancelling Istanbul’s gay pride parade for a third year in a row. Police used rubber bullets and detained 10 people to suppress the event, according to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.

Idil said he was worried that the government’s bullying attitude to the LGBT community was legitimising homophobia and encouraging people to voice their prejudices.

“I think the nationalism which is rising day by day in Turkey has an influence on what people think about the LGBT community. According to the majority of people, we cannot be the descendant of our supposedly glorious ancestors,” he said.

“It isn’t just uneducated people but also the well-educated who think that being gay is not natural. When they want to humiliate someone, they easily use word ibne, which means gay in Turkish.”

Necmiye, 40, who works in Istanbul, also said the ban was not a surprise, and he emphasised that the government’s anti-secular stance was extremely dangerous.

“The public were told that secularism was the enemy of Islam and its values. But LGBTI+ people are citizens of this country and it is the state’s duty to protect them. If there is an issue of homophobia, rather than trying to hush down the LGBTI+ movement, the public needs to be educated,” he said.

Like everyone who responded to our callout, Leyla a 22-year-old student from Istanbul, asked to disguise her identity as she feared reprisals for speaking out.

“No one ever wants to attend the LGBTI events or protest any more,” she said. “People want their reputation to stay clean. They couldn’t even use their names or faces in something about LGBTI. And also other hate crimes get more common because the judges sentence the criminals not as bad as they deserve.”

According to those who responded to our callout, attacks on the LGBTI community are frequent and it is ironic that authorities cite threats to public order as a reason for curtailing freedoms.

“The community is lovely as we try to help each other out at all times; however, not many of us can talk openly about who we truly are and who we truly love,” said Leyla. “As we are kind of forced to live in the closet, most of us try to show support to the LGBTQ+ community and individuals through social media accounts with fake names.”

But it was the government’s claim that LGBT events could provoke “reactions within certain segments of society” that respondents said was the most worrying. Sune, a student in the south of Turkey, said he had been constantly bullied by his peers because of his identity.

“It is really hard to live in Turkey. We are exposed to a lot of discrimination and bad treatment because the majority of society is conservative. Even our families do not like it and do not accept us. It is more convenient to live in cosmopolitan cities, such as Istanbul and Ankara, but life is really hard for those living in rural areas like me,” he said.

“People have been asked which of the minority groups you would not want to be your neighbour and 90-95% of respondents say they do not want to be next door to homosexuals.

“If you want to be gay in Turkey, go to the Netherlands. If I can, I do not want to stay for a second. I want to go to Netherlands. I really wanted to live abroad and complete my education there.”

Another respondent, Damir, said many of his friends had relocated to other countries because of the political situation and the hampering of LGBT rights.

“The rise of political Islam meant that everything from legislations to education was seen as not Islamic enough,” he said. “It is such a shame that the unique status of Turkey as the most LGBTI+ friendly Muslim-majority country is being eroded.”

*All names have been changed due to security considerations.