Turkey opened COP31, the U.N. climate summit, in Antalya on Nov. 9. Two months earlier, a nationwide police operation against LGBTI groups led to at least 116 arrests in 15 provinces, Amnesty International says.
“There can be no climate justice without the freedom to demand it,” Marta Schaaf, Amnesty’s program director for climate, said in a Nov. 8 statement.
Nearly 200 countries are in Antalya through Nov. 20, and more than 90,000 people are expected, U.N. News reported. Turkey’s environment minister, Murat Kurum, is COP31 president. Australia’s Chris Bowen runs the negotiations.
Turkey’s LGBTQ Crackdown and the ‘My Family Is Safe’ Raids
Police hit gay bars, offices and activists’ homes in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Mersin starting Sept. 13, Al Jazeera reported. Justice Minister Akin Gurlek pitched the “My Family is Safe” sweep as child protection.
On X, he wrote that “no criminal organization, abuse network or illegal activity which targets children, youths or families will be tolerated!”
His prosecutors were investigating 162 suspects, nine associations and 13 businesses, he said.
“The scale, timing and selection of targets indicate a coordinated attack on organised LGBTI+ civil society in Türkiye,” ILGA-Europe and other groups said in a joint statement on Sept. 14.
In Ankara, authorities accused the LGBTI rights group Kaos GL of publishing obscene posts that kids could reach online, Al Jazeera reported, citing the group. Within days, courts had jailed at least 62 people pending trial, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported. Those jailings aren’t convictions.
“This appalling escalation in Türkiye’s crackdown amounts to a full-scale assault on LGBTI rights and those who defend them,” Esther Major, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for Europe, said Sept. 15.
By Sept. 22, Amnesty counted at least 83 people in pretrial detention and more than 160 under criminal investigation. Hundreds of social media accounts were blocked or restricted, Amnesty Türkiye’s X account among them.
Milena Buyum, Amnesty’s senior campaigner on Europe, warned that “the Turkish authorities have every intention of intensifying the crackdown.”
“Erdoğan’s ‘family values’ agenda is about more than defending conservative values, it is about defining what kind of society Turkey should be and who belongs in it,” Gonul Tol, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Fox News Digital.
A Draft Law Targeting ‘Contrary to Biological Sex’ Conduct
A criminal bill has hung over LGBTQ Turks for a year. A leaked draft of the government’s 11th Judicial Package would’ve punished conduct “contrary to biological sex and general morality,” Human Rights Watch reported in October 2025.
HRW’s Europe and Central Asia director, Hugh Williamson, said the measure “would leave LGBT people in constant fear of arrest and prosecution.”
Those provisions were dropped before parliament voted. In February, a pro-government daily said the Justice Ministry would bring them back as a standalone bill, Turkish Minute reported.
Under that version, anyone who “publicly encourages, praises or promotes attitudes and behaviors contrary to innate biological sex and general morality” could get one to three years in prison. The minimum age for legal gender change would go from 18 to 25. As of Nov. 9, no report showed it had passed.
Istanbul Pride has been banned since 2015, according to Amnesty. At this year’s march in Kadıköy in June, police detained at least 65 people, journalists among them, bianet reported. Gayety covered the detentions at the time.
“Silence in the face of this escalation will only create space for further aggressive repression,” the September joint statement said.
COP31 Host Agreement Tells Participants Not to Interfere in Turkey’s Affairs
Turkey’s hosting agreement with the U.N. says participants with privileges and immunities “have the duty to respect the laws and regulations in force in the Republic of Türkiye and have the duty not to interfere in its internal affairs,” as Climate Home News reported.
COP28 and COP29 had similar language. It was dropped for COP30 in Brazil.
Ann Harrison, a climate justice policy adviser at Amnesty, said it was “extremely disappointing” to see those clauses return, Climate Home reported. She warned of a “wider chilling effect” on free expression and assembly.
Asked earlier in September about protest rights at COP31, Kurum told reporters his team would “try to meet” civil society requests and offer “a free space to express themselves.”
The agreement’s text doesn’t mention LGBTQ people. A separate Green Zone pledge for speakers asks them to respect “public morality,” and it doesn’t list sexual orientation or gender identity among its protections, Turkish Minute reported.
Women and Gender Constituency Presses Kurum, Bowen and Stiell
In September, the Women and Gender Constituency, a coalition active in the U.N. climate talks, asked Kurum, Bowen and U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell to guarantee the safety of all participants “regardless of their identities.”
“Human rights advocacy is not a crime. Solidarity is not a crime,” the constituency wrote.
“The secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and attending governments should publicly press Turkish authorities to ensure respect for free expression in Antalya so that civil society groups and communities can be heard at COP31,” Maria Laura Canineu, deputy environment director at Human Rights Watch, said.
Stiell’s opening speech, as U.N. News summarized it, didn’t mention human rights.
“Progress is nowhere near far enough or fair enough,” he told the plenary on Nov. 9.
Outside the venue, an alternative People’s Climate Summit opens in Antalya on Nov. 14 with a march and rally, Turkish Minute reported. It runs through Nov. 18.
