In Türkiye, the justice ministry is reviving an anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation that eyes to imprison people for publicly praising LGBTQIA+ identity, criminalize same-sex engagement and wedding ceremonies, and impose restrictions on gender transition, based on pro-government Türkiye media.
In 2025, the government presented a draft of the 11th judicial reform package (11th Judicial Package, or the 11. Yargı Paketi) that included stricter penalties for people who publicly express being LGBTQIA+, as well as for those conducting same-sex ceremonies.
This time around, the Justice Ministry is expected to reintroduce a standalone legislation in the parliament.
The draft law is expected to:
- add new criminal provisions to the Turkish Penal Code, stipulating that anyone who “publicly encourages, praises or promotes attitudes and behaviors contrary to innate biological sex and general morality” would face one to three years in prison,
- add a clause that could target LGBT advocacy or expression
- impose prison terms of one-and-a-half to four years for people who participate in a same-sex engagement or wedding ceremonies
- jail for three to seven years medical practitioners who perform gender transition surgery without court authorization
- jail for one to three years transgender people who undergo unauthorized procedures
- rewrite the conditions under which Turkish courts can authorize a person to legally change their gender (e.g. raising the minimum age from 18 to 25, requiring four separate medical evaluations from a government-approved hospital)
Interestingly, being LGBTQIA+ is actually not illegal in Türkiye, with the country decriminalizing homosexuality in 1858 under Ottoman rule. Same-sex relations have also never been illegal in the Turkish Republic. And yet Türkiye ranks 47th out of 49 European countries on the annual list of countries cited by ILGA-Europe for providing legal protections to LGBTQIA+ people.
