The Hate Review

Country Group: State capture

Key indicators in 2025: Contamination 4.00 / 4  ·  Impact 3.55 / 4

Turkey’s anti-gender movement is driven primarily from the top of the executive, with civil society actors operating largely in alignment with the state, and has deepened in lockstep with the country’s democratic backsliding under the AKP government in power since 2002. In the early years of AKP rule, the dominant frame was pronatalist. From 2013, Istanbul Convention debates helped develop the “Western imposition” narrative that ultimately enabled the 2021 withdrawal. From 2020, state-endorsed dehumanising rhetoric escalated sharply, and anti-LGBTIQ+ framing was fully weaponised electorally in 2022–2023. The movement’s most recent phase combines systematic judicial dissolution of LGBTIQ+ organisations, criminal prosecution of individual defenders, and the consolidation of the Büyük Aile Platformu, a state-backed coalition bridging Islamist, nationalist and business actors. Erdoğan’s declaration of a “Decade of Family and Population” for 2026–2035 signals that anti-gender governance has been embedded in a long-term state programme.