17/01/2025 | Writer: Kaos GL

KaosGL.org Editor-in-Chief Yıldız Tar spoke to Gizem Örnek from Gazete Duvar about the declaration of 2025 as the ‘Family Year’.

‘This year the Ministry of Family will be the “battering ram” of discriminatory political violence’ Kaos GL - News Portal for LGBTI+

President and AKP Chairman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced in his ‘Address to the Nation’ speech after the cabinet meeting on 6 January that they declared 2025 as the ‘Family Year’.

On 13 January, the ‘Family Year’ was introduced at the Beştepe Millet Congress and Culture Centre in the Presidential Complex, and LGBTI+’s were targeted.

Click-Family Year was introduced, LGBTI+'s are targeted again: ‘Desexualisation using LGBT as a battering ram...’

KaosGL.org Editor-in-Chief Yıldız Tar evaluated the determination of 2025 as the ‘Family Year’ in an interview with Gizem Örnek from Gazete Duvar.

Stating that LGBTI+'s are facing a conscious political violence, Tar used the following expressions:

"What the government means by the expression “desexualisation”, which it has been using to target LGBTI+s for a while, is that LGBTI+s exist and women are equal and free. What they defend as ‘fıtrat’ is that LGBTI+'s -as if it were possible- should disappear, and women should be locked up at home with gender roles and obey. Therefore, the aim of the People's Alliance in the Family Year is not to protect the family, but to spread their homophobic, transphobic and sexist agenda to the whole society. We need to name the process we have been going through since 2015 well. This is not just a problem of discrimination or hate speech; we are facing a conscious political violence. The Family Year is the last step of this."

‘Disinformation is systematically produced about LGBTI+’s’

Tar said that the government is playing a dangerous game in terms of social peace and democracy by labelling LGBTI+s as ‘enemies of the family’ and said:

"Disinformation is systematically produced about LGBTI+s, who are the most natural part of this society and therefore the family. In the past years, the centres of this disinformation production were institutions such as TİHEK, RTÜK, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Interior and Religious Affairs. It seems that the Ministry of Family will be the ‘battering ram’ of discriminatory political violence this year as well."

Tar added the following:

"This kind of disinformation and hate speech, which is in no way connected to reality but presented as if it were real, does not only remain in words. It also increases violence and discrimination against LGBTI+s. Just in the past weeks, images of violence against trans women in the streets in Istanbul and Izmir were reflected on social media. While new ones are being added to hate murders, impunity is becoming widespread. LGBTI+’s cannot access employment, and those who can are deprived of their right to work due to discriminatory practices in the workplace. And all these are practices that the government feeds and grows, let alone struggling against them. It seems that we will witness an increase in such practices in 2025."

 


Tags: human rights, media, family
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