'We're becoming Russia' says LGBTQ+ activist jailed by Turkey

• Enes Hocaoğulları was detained for 35 days
• Turkey seeking to criminalise LGBTQ+ identities
• Hocaoğulları warns country is following Russia's path

VILNIUS - An LGBTQ+ activist, detained in August by Turkish authorities and now released pending trial, has? urged the European Union to take action against his country's crackdown on civil rights, warning Turkey is following the path of Russia.

Enes Hocaoğulları, a 23-year-old youth delegate to the Council of Europe, was arrested and placed in pre-trial detention for 35 days after he arrived at Ankara Esenboğa Airport from France on Aug. 5.

Prosecutors accused him of "spreading false information to mislead the public" and "inciting hatred and enmity", in a short speech he made at a Council of Europe conference, where he spoke about Turkish anti-government protests in March.

Both charges are punishable by jail terms.

Hocaoğulları was released on Sept. 8, pending trial next February. He must report to the police once a month until then.

Council of Europe officials visited Hocaoğulları in prison, and he believes this helped secure his release. But, he said, as Turkey's government pursues court cases against political opponents and with lawmakers poised to consider an anti-LGBTQ+ bill, the EU could "undoubtedly" be doing more.

"There is so much on the table between Turkey and the EU; migration, trade, defence, security," Hocaoğulları told Context during an LGBTQ+ conference in Vilnius, Lithuania.

"Queer rights and human rights should always be one of their top priorities. I don't understand what other wake-up call the European countries need. We are one step away from becoming the current Russia."

Turkey has intensified a crackdown on civil society since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's election win in 2023, with activists, journalists and opposition politicians increasingly targeted, his critics say.

Erdoğan has repeatedly referred to the LGBTQ+ movement as an "enemy" of traditional Turkish values, and in January launched the "Year of the Family", describing LGBTQ+ rights as "harmful trends and perverse ideologies".

Worsening rights

Turkey already has poor protections for LGBTQ+ people, and ranks third from last out of 49 European countries for rights, according to advocacy group ILGA Europe.

Last year saw the "systematisation of anti-LGBTQ+ practices" within the Ministry of Family and Social Services, Turkish human rights group KAOS GL reported. 

In October, a bill seeking to criminalise engaging in attitudes and behaviours "contrary to biological sex and public morality" and restricting the process for changing legal gender was sent to parliament.

The bill would also criminalise the "promotion" of such activities and punish performing even symbolic same-sex wedding or engagement ceremonies with prison time.

Hocaoğulları said the proposals had already had an effect.

"Many queer individuals, not even activists, are fearing for their lives. People have stopped going to queer safe spaces, or sharing queer content on social media," he said.

"They've stopped being affiliated with queer organisations. They've even deleted dating apps."

Striving for acceptance 

Acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in Turkey is among the lowest in Europe, according to research by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, published in 2021.

However, a survey published by KAOS GL in May found that fewer than 40% of respondents said they opposed LGBTQ+ rights, while 38.8% supported LGBTQ+ persons right to live in equality and freedom. 

Hocaoğulları witnessed these contrasting and often contradictory attitudes in detention, where he slept on the floors of crowded communal cells, sometimes sharing the space with more than 50 others.

As international outcry over his case grew, with the Council of Europe and Amnesty International among others calling for his release, his cell mates discovered he was LGBTQ+.

They immediately treated him differently, he said.

"I felt betrayed. In my mind I was thinking, you loved me a day ago. What changed? I am still the same person," Hocaoğulları said.

He decided to confront the problem head on and made a speech, saying he was not ashamed, but proud of his identity. Afterwards, he said some of the men asked for his forgiveness.

"One of the most successful techniques the current government uses is making us labour under the delusion that society hates us," Hocaoğulları said.

"My prison experience showed me they don't. They are just alienated from us."

Sweeping censorship laws 

If the new anti-LGBTQ+ bill passes, it will be the latest in a series of censorship laws introduced across Europe, including in Bulgaria and Georgia last year.

Kazakhstan this week gave preliminary approval to a bill banning LGBTQ+ 'propaganda', while Hungary in March moved to block all Pride marches after passing a censorship law in 2021.

Budapest Pride still went ahead in June, drawing huge crowds. Hocaoğulları said the event gave him mixed feelings 10 years on from Istanbul's own Pride ban.

"Everything [in Turkey] has changed dramatically in the past decade, but it was done very slowly, very gradually," Hocaoğulları said.

"I have to think what would have happened if we had shown that solidarity then? I think Pride would be freed in Turkey.

(Reporting by Lucy Middleton; Editing by Jon Hemming.)