Turkish Police Raided LGBTQ Groups in 12 Provinces Over the Weekend and Detained at Least 47 People. The Operation Is Called 'My Family Is Safe.'

Turkish authorities detained at least 47 people in coordinated weekend raids on LGBTQ associations, bars and activists' homes across 12 provinces, prosecutors said Sunday, in what rights groups described as the broadest crackdown on the community in years. Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said the investigations now cover 162 suspects, nine associations and 13 businesses in 15 provinces, including Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Aydin and Mersin.

The Istanbul chief prosecutor's office said its operation targeted 38 suspects and that 26 had been taken into custody, with police seizing drugs, digital equipment, smuggled alcohol and a firearm. Ankara prosecutors separately reported 21 detentions connected to Kaos GL, one of Turkey's oldest LGBTQ organizations, and said five more people were being sought. The formal charges cited were prostitution and obscenity.

Kaos GL put the number of detained activists at 50 or more, including more than 10 who were taken from their homes in dawn raids. Authorities also blocked access to dozens of websites and social media accounts belonging to LGBTQ organizations, activists and rights advocates. The prosecutor's office said it had found evidence that the groups' activities were influencing minors on sexual orientation and gender identity, and that the operations were meant to stop such activity from being "regarded as normal in society."

The government has named the campaign "My Family Is Safe." It is being carried out under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "Decade of Family and Population," an initiative launched to reverse Turkey's falling birth rate and slow the aging of its population. Erdogan has increasingly framed LGBTQ visibility as a threat to the family, and Istanbul's Pride march has been banned by the governor's office every year since 2015.

The Human Rights Association of Turkey said the operation's stated purpose was a cover. "The real name of this operation is not 'My Family is Safe'; it is state-led discrimination, politics of fear and the dismantling of civil society," the group said in a statement. Nacho Sánchez Amor, the European Parliament's rapporteur on Turkey, called the arrests "a shocking escalation" and "a blatant violation of fundamental rights and Turkey's international commitments."

Turkey decriminalized homosexuality in the 19th century and has never had a law against it, which has made the use of obscenity and prostitution statutes against organized groups a point of contention with the Council of Europe, of which Turkey is a member. Rights lawyers said Sunday they expected the detainees to be brought before judges within days, and that the association closures, if ordered, would be challenged in court.

The raids come as Ankara is seeking closer ties with European capitals on defense and trade, and as the European Parliament prepares its annual report on Turkey's stalled accession process. Sánchez Amor is the author of that report.