“Homophobia and transphobia are spread across every aspect of daily life,” says Sezen Yalcin, a coordinator at the Social Policies, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association, an Istanbul-based NGO. “L.G.B.T. people live in fear of being exposed,” she adds. Those who are openly gay or transsexual are seen as “defying the near-holy family structure.”

Many Turkish activists are thus skeptical of the ministry’s stated intentions, particularly as no L.G.B.T. rights groups were informed — much less consulted — before Mr. Bozdag’s announcement. To date, any plans for L.G.B.T.-only prisons remain entirely abstract, and some see the whole episode as a cynical reaction by a government seeking to parry criticisms from Brussels and opposition parliamentarians in Ankara, and eager for protection from lawsuits.

Questions of best practice for the treatment of L.G.B.T. inmates are complex, and policies vary worldwide. In Turkey, where no national regulations are in place, general protocol is to restrict their interaction with the wider prison population. In facilities with more than one L.G.B.T. inmate, cells may be shared. But because there are few openly L.G.B.T. inmates, isolation often effectively means solitary confinement — a punishment reserved for higher-risk criminals.

One transgender inmate described her treatment when she was incarcerated 10 years ago in a letter this year to an NGO working on improving prison conditions. Using the pen name “Funda,” she recalled how the administrators in the facility to which she was initially assigned were “dumbfounded” by her condition. They forced her to strip in front of several male officers so that they could check her genitals, placed her in solitary confinement with no hot water or toilet, and called her “the man who dressed like a woman.” Transferred to a second prison, she was confined to a solitary cell in a high-security ward. Another request was necessary before she was moved to a facility with transgender inmates.

Recent reports suggest not much has changed in the last decade.

The European Court of Human Rights in October 2012 ruled that Turkish prison authorities had subjected a young gay male to “inhuman and degrading” treatment in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2008, soon after being detained, he requested a transfer from a cell where he was being bullied to one shared with other gay inmates. Instead, he was placed in solitary confinement for over eight months. The court held that the state must ensure treatment that did not cause “hardship beyond that which is an unavoidably inherent feature of detention.” Ankara was ordered to pay the defendant 22,000 euros, and a precedent was established.