Turkey’s justice ministry is drafting legislation that would imprison people for publicly praising LGBT identity, criminalize same-sex engagement and wedding ceremonies and impose sweeping restrictions on gender transition, Turkish Minute reported, citing the pro-government Türkiye daily.
The measures, originally included in a broader reform package known as the 11th Judicial Package, were dropped at the last minute before parliament voted on the bill. According to Türkiye, the Justice Ministry is expected to reintroduce them shortly as standalone legislation in the parliament.
The draft law would 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, a clause that in practice would target LGBT advocacy or expression. It would also impose prison terms of one-and-a-half to four years for people who participate in a same-sex engagement or wedding ceremonies.
Medical practitioners who perform gender transition surgery without court authorization would face three to seven years, with sentences doubled if the patient is a minor or the provider is unlicensed. Transgender people who undergo unauthorized procedures would face one to three years.
The draft would rewrite the conditions under which Turkish courts can authorize a person to legally change their gender, which currently requires court approval, proof of a transsexual diagnosis and permanent infertility. The new proposal raises the minimum age from 18 to 25, requires the applicant to be unmarried and mandates four separate medical evaluations from a government-approved teaching and research hospital, each conducted no less than three months apart, which would take a year at a minimum.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had declared 2025 Turkey’s “Year of the Family,” a government initiative aimed at addressing the country’s declining birth rate. In speeches, Erdoğan has described LGBT activism as a “scourge,” “fascism” and a foreign plot to undermine Turkish society, and vowed to take “every necessary precaution against deviant movements like LGBT.”
Turkey withdrew from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention on violence against women in 2021 after officials and pro-government groups argued it undermined Turkey’s “family values” and was being used to “normalize homosexuality,” a reference to the treaty’s non-discrimination provision, which includes sexual orientation. Authorities have repeatedly banned Pride marches in İstanbul since 2015, with participants often detained during police crackdowns.
Turkey decriminalized homosexuality in 1858 under Ottoman rule, and same-sex relations have never been illegal in the Turkish Republic. But legal protections have eroded steadily. ILGA-Europe, the continent’s leading LGBT rights organization, currently ranks Turkey 47th out of 49 European countries on its annual index of legal protections for LGBT people.
Human Rights Watch called the original version of the proposals, when they were leaked to media in October, “one of the most alarming rollbacks of rights in decades.” The organization warned that criminalizing both patients and providers would push procedures for gender transition underground, heightening risks of medical complications and exploitation.
