The anti-LGBTI+ tactic of populist regimes

The declaration of 2025 as the “year of the family” in Turkey was not good news for women and LGBTI+ individuals from the very beginning. Because the concept of “family” has become a code word for conservative moralist governments to increase the pressure on women and LGBTI+ individuals almost everywhere in the world today.

There has already been incredible pressure on these two groups for years. As a matter of fact, an environment of conservative, moralist oppression has been going on de facto for years with the overnight and unlawful withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, the inability to prevent violence against women but violently preventing March 8 marches every year, the banning of the LGBTI+ Pride March every year in complete violation of the constitution, the punishment of TV series and movies with LGBTI+ content by the broadcast oversight board RTÜK without any legal basis, and other unlawful restrictions that cannot be counted.

The new law proposal uncovered by KaosGL seems to have been prepared to put this de facto oppressive environment into legal cover against LGBTI+ individuals.

Homophobia as a tool of populism

One of the political concepts on everyone's lips these days is populism. Whether this concept, which almost everyone agrees is on the rise, is an ideology or not, which political method is populism, or the differences between left-wing and right-wing populism are widely debated. Although these debates are still ongoing, one thing that is agreed upon is that populists always “need an enemy”.

As Jan-Werner Müller shows in his seminal book What is Populism?, populists' preferred method of keeping their supporters together and winning new ones is to divide society into “us and them”. The “us” in this discourse represents the “real nation” and the “them” represents the “others”, the enemies of the nation. 

In left populism, these “others” are usually economic elites, i.e. bosses. Therefore, they have a concrete counterpart. In right-wing populist discourse, on the other hand, the scale of “others” expands from abstract concepts such as “foreign powers/five families ruling the world/Illuminati” to foreign immigrants and even marginalized citizens. Depending on the need of the day, one can be declared “other” any day.

The increasing targeting of the dignity and rights of LGBTI+ individuals in many countries around the world in recent years is a result of the global rise of right-wing populism. As Ece Temelkuran points out in the first chapter of her book How to Lose a Country, the AK Party, which has been a populist movement since its foundation, seems to have decided to jump on Putin's train and fuel LGBTI+ hostility as a new tool of polarization after Öcalan's call for the dissolution of the PKK and the overthrow of Assad in Syria.

Othering as a method of polarization

It goes without saying that LGBTI+ is not an organization or an ideology. Either you are an LGBTI+ person or you are not. You cannot become an LGBTI+ person with the influence or coercion of “someone”, nor can someone who is LGBTI+ be made a heterosexual person. If this were possible, few people would risk enduring social and political pressures, being unemployed, being subjected to violence and even being killed.

Marginalization, isolation from social life and thus deprivation of rights, similar to what was done to black people and women in history, continues against LGBTI+ individuals in most countries of the world today. In this sense, the LGBTI+ movement, which has been going on for years against this and has sometimes resulted in gains, is actually a movement for equality. 

• The question is simple: “Why can't I enjoy the same rights and freedoms as other citizens just because I love someone of my own sex or have changed my gender?”

Just as in the past black people were discriminated against due to the color of their skin, women because of their gender, and many other communities were discriminated against because of certain identities they could not change, and overcame (or tried to overcome) this discrimination through the struggle for equality, today LGBTI+ people are subjected to similar discrimination and are engaged in a similar struggle.

Russia leading the backlash against equality gains

In recent years, LGBTI+ people in many Western and Latin American countries have successfully fought for equality. They have made gains at the legal and constitutional level in terms of being able to exist in their true identity and to be treated equally with other citizens in matters such as marriage. In contrast, in some other countries right-wing populist governments, which also draw on religious elements to keep their supporters united, have chosen to demonize and oppress LGBTI+ persons.

Russia is a prime example. The 2013 law, which is said to have been enacted “to protect children from information that advocates the denial of traditional family values”, aimed to prevent the visibility of LGBTI+ people. According to this law, if you in any way publicly show that you are an LGBTI+ person or support the struggle for LGBTI+ equality, you are committing a crime.

First came de facto bans

Before this law, there was a strong LGBTI+ equality movement, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg, fighting against discrimination. For example, they took the unlawful blocking of the Moscow Pride Parade to the European Court of Human Rights and won the case in 2010. 

However, the pressure has increased on the grounds of “undermining the security of Russian society” or “public morality”, which allow for unpredictable and arbitrary bans. In particular, the justification of protecting “traditional values” has been used to block any struggle for equality, and discriminatory practices against LGBTI+ persons have continued to increase. This systematic repression has turned Russia into a global leader in this regard.

In 2023, after the discriminatory restrictions of the 2013 law were added to the war propaganda that emerged with the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Constitutional Court declared the LGBTI+ movement an “extremist organization”. Thus making the entire struggle for equality illegal. Today, LGBTI+ people in Russia are neither able to live their identities freely nor to speak out against the discrimination they face.

Others on board of the anti-equality train

This repression in Russia was reflected in the lands of the former USSR. Right-wingers, who wanted to fill the void left by the abandonment of communist ideology with moralistic and religious values, turned anti-LGBTI+ sentiment into a propaganda tool. In 2012, the far-right and nationalist Jobbik party in Hungary proposed a constitutional amendment against “sexual perversion”, claiming to protect “public morality” and “the mental health of younger generations”.

Although this proposal, which proposed to punish any public LGBTI+ visibility with three years in prison, was not initially adopted, in 2021 the Hungarian parliament passed a law banning the visibility of LGBTI+ people on daytime television and companies' campaigns supporting the struggle for LGBTI+ equality.

• However, due to the provisions of the law that can be taken in all directions, even whether same-sex couples can walk hand in hand on the street has become a subject of debate.

Turning a deaf ear to reactions from the European Union, the United States and institutions such as the Venice Commission, the Orban government not only did not repeal the law, but also further restricted the visibility of products containing information about the LGBTI+ movement. All this has led to a rapid increase in material and physical violence against LGBTI+ people. Today in Hungary, television channels cannot show commercials and movies featuring LGBTI+ people. There are also problems in publishing books with queer stories.

'LGBTI+ Free Zones' in Poland 

Another country that has increased pressure on LGBTI+ individuals in recent years has been Poland. Although homosexuality was decriminalized in 1932, in Poland, where society is generally considered conservative, Article 18 of the Constitution contains a clear provision that “marriage can only be between a man and a woman”. There is therefore a serious obstacle to marriage equality.

In addition, the Justice and Development Party (PiS), which has been in power for the past two terms, has used this issue as a propaganda tool to divide society and has antagonized LGBTI+ people. So much so that nearly 100 PiS municipalities across the country have declared themselves “LGBT-free zones”. Of course, this was not meant to expel LGBTI+ people, but to destroy any kind of visibility. President Andrej Duda's statement “People are not LGBT, LGBT is an ideology” was also influential in this. 

LGBTI+ persons did not come to being with laws, and cannot disappear with laws

If a law amendment proposal in line with the leaked documents is indeed being prepared, it means that the AK Party has decided to get on board the Russian train and join in the further marginalization and demonization of LGBTI+ persons. If this proposal becomes law, these individuals, whose rights and freedoms are violated every day and who are subjected to all kinds of violence and discrimination even under the current conditions, will become even more withdrawn and will be forced to live their identities in secret and under pressure.

Such a law would protect neither the children nor the family. Because sexual identities cannot be prevented by laws. No matter what you do, you cannot ban a biological fact that has been a part of all societies since ancient times, even when there was no internet. If you try to ban it, it would be against both the laws of nature and the right to “self-existence” guaranteed by Article 17 of the Constitution. This is what is against morality and law.

You may be worried about LGBTI+ people becoming more visible for religious or moral reasons. Don't be. If your child is LGBTI+, they are LGBTI+. That's it. This is not the result of a subversive ideology, nor is it the result of a foreign conspiracy. Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Alan Turing, Harvey Milk, Freddie Mercury, Zeki Müren, Bülent Ersoy and many others did not have Netflix or “LGBT ideology” during their childhood. They were already LGBTI+, they chose to be themselves with dignity and paid a price to enrich our lives.

Today, all of us, but especially every single citizen in countries where populists are in power, should strive to eliminate de facto and de jure discrimination and embrace the richness that comes from diversity instead of aggravating these threats. When we do this, we will give the most effective response to populist governments that polarize us. LGBTI+ equality will make the whole society more just and free for everyone.

As we say, there is no salvation alone, either all together or none of us.

^{* This article was originally published in Turkish on March 7, 2025.}