02/03/2025 | Writer: Kaos GL
METU Students reacted to the proposed amendments to the Civil Code and Penal Code in a press statement held on the Physics lawn.
While 2025 was designated as the ‘Family Year’, the Draft Law Proposal on Amendments to the Turkish Penal Code and Some Laws came out of the bag this time. According to the draft law proposal reached by KaosGL.org; The expression ‘biological sex’ will be added to the Criminal Code. LGBTI+ expressions in the public sphere will be penalised, and legal procedures regarding the gender affirmation process will become more difficult.
Click-LGBTI+'s are targeted with amendments to the Civil Code and Penal Code
METU Students organised a press statement against the draft law on the Physics lawn February 28. ‘With our solidarity, we stand against this LGBTI+phobic, transphobic draft law and we will continue to stand against it!’ said the students in their statement.
The full statement is as follows:
‘On Thursday, 27 February, a draft law targeting LGBTI+’s and trans lives came to the agenda.
This draft law includes regulations such as raising the age for gender affirmation from 18 to 21, the return of the condition of deprivation of reproductive ability, the process can be carried out by hospitals determined by the Ministry of Health, those who undergo surgery abroad or aesthetically can be punished, those who publicly encourage, praise or encourage attitudes and behaviours contrary to innate biological sex and public morality will be punished with imprisonment from one to three years, and the expression ‘biological sex’ will be added to the Criminal Code. It contains articles that target, marginalise and threaten the lives of LGBTI+s, such as defining LGBTI+ expressions as ‘indecency’ and making these expressions visible will be punished, and if people of the same sex perform engagement or marriage ceremonies, these people will be sentenced to imprisonment from one year and six months to four years.
We have gathered here today to raise our voices against this draft law and to declare that we stand against this bill with all our strength and solidarity.
We recognise these hate policies that the AKP-MHP government is fuelling day by day. We know that the AKP targeted LGBTI+'s in the very first sentences of the post-election balcony speech. Again, we know the torture and detentions that the police of the AKP government applied to the Pride Marches in cities and campuses, and the lawsuits they unlawfully filed against these Pride Marches. We remember the struggle of our friends who were unlawfully detained and unlawfully sued during the Istanbul Pride March. We know, we recognise and we continue to stand against these hate policies, as we always do, in every march, in every Pride March."
‘There is no salvation, either all together or none of us’
"One of the tools and results of the government's policy of fuelling anti-trans hatred and attempting to “destroy” trans lives, which is carried out arm in arm with LGBTI+phobic politicians, leaders and billionaires around the world, is the restriction of trans people's access to hormones, which are an important part of their medical affirmation process, and the de facto ban for many trans individuals. Although the official access to hormones for transgender people, who have historically not been considered ‘reasonable’ in Turkey, has always been restricted and prevented by outdated methods, the prescription restrictions announced as of 2024 November and the draft law that emerged the other day, and the attempt to turn non-medical affirmation process tools (such as the right to be addressed by a chosen name, clothing and physical preferences confirming gender identity) into an element of crime, is an attempt on the lives of trans people and a ban on their existence.
The palace regime; Today, it makes the working class work under inhumane conditions, dragging women and LGBTI+s to a life of misery with the poverty crisis it deepens.
While the AKP government bans LGBTI+'s with the crises it has created, while preventing them from living and making them poorer and poorer, we have no other way but to organise a total struggle against this darkness. We will shout shoulder to shoulder against this fascist order that ignores LGBTI+'s:
There is no salvation alone, all together or none of us!
‘Big Family Platform’, one of the biggest tools of hate against LGBTI+s, organised hate marches in many parts of Turkey. Their videos were broadcast as public service announcements by RTÜK in violation of human rights. In these marches organised under the name of ‘Big Family Meetings’, LGBTI+s were targeted by using the discourse of ‘holy family’. The police, who unlawfully detained LGBTI+s in every Pride March, did not intervene in these marches when hate crimes were openly committed."
‘You will not be able to intimidate rights defenders’
This government, which tries to make us forget the father who burned himself by saying ‘My children are hungry!’, the mother who committed suicide in the next room because she could not heat her children, the children who were taken away from their right to education and married before they came of age, declared 2025 as the ‘Family Year’ and placed LGBTI+s at the centre of the problems.
We call out to the government that accuses LGBTI+s of disrupting the concept of the sacred family:
Are LGBTI+s also responsible for the hundreds of thousands of people who died in the Hatay Earthquake because you did not take precautions, for the condemnation of families to containers two years later, or for the families burnt alive in Kartalkaya because you did not take precautions?
If your concept of sacred family is children who are abused by family members, women who are subjected to violence and even killed by their husbands, know. We will destroy your sacred family!
On 18 February, more than 50 people were detained in operations against HDK. On 21 February, 30 people, including our friends Elçin and Yıldız from the LGBTI+ struggle, were arrested, 13 people were given house arrest, and 7 people were released on judicial control conditions.
During Yıldız's testimony, her meetings with women and LGBTI+ rights defenders between 2012 and 2015 were presented as a criminal offence. You cannot criminalise our transfeminist struggle and you cannot imprison journalists who report on it.
You will not intimidate LGBTI+'s, women and right to life defenders! Release our friends immediately.
We draw strength from the struggle for life of trans people in Bayram Street, Bornova Street, trans people whose lives are restricted in every field, trans people who are discouraged from their lives; we draw strength from the struggle for life of all LGBTI+ people who have become the target of the hatred of the government at every point of their lives. With our solidarity, we stand against this LGBTI+phobic, transphobic draft law and we will continue to stand!"
Tags: human rights, media, family
