State hostility towards LGBT+ people

Deniz Güngör

The AKP government continues to stoke hatred alongside its rhetoric of “family”, with statements that target women and LGBTI+ people. The latest example is TRT’s documentary titled “Rainbow Fascism”, which targets LGBTI+ individuals. While the trailer was released from TRT’s social media account, the documentary will be broadcast on Tabii, TRT’s international digital video platform.

TRT Director General Zahid Sobacı shared the documentary on social media and made scandalous remarks. Sobacı’s words, “‘Can you hear it? These are the footsteps of fascism...’ We are exposing an ideological siege that has declared war on the institution of the family and has placed our children and our values in the crosshairs,” drew backlash.

Kaos GL Editor-in-Chief Yıldız Tar said it is unacceptable for TRT, which is funded by the taxes of 85 million people, to declare some citizens “enemies”.

“THEY ARE CREATING AN ‘ENEMY’”

Pointing to the fact that citizens are struggling with poverty amid a deepening economic crisis, Tar said, “When the country is in the middle of an economic crisis, what is TRT doing? They take the money that comes out of our pockets, our taxes, and spend it on creating imaginary enemies and stoking hatred. They are doing propaganda against the public with the public’s money. If they are looking for somewhere to waste resources, they should turn and look at the real problems of the people,” he said.

Saying, “And they have the nerve to say ‘fascism’,” Tar stated that targeting LGBTI+ people who face discrimination is fascism itself. Emphasising that this documentary produced by TRT is not public service broadcasting, Tar said, “If they say ‘fascism’, then let’s remember what fascism did to LGBTI+ people and how it seized the truth and turned it upside down. While heterosexism and the binary gender regime are oppressive ideologies, labelling the mere existence of LGBTI+ people who oppose this ideological imposition as ‘ideology’ and even ‘fascism’ is a typical fascistic approach: seizing the truth and turning it upside down. This method does not only use the lie that the oppressed are the oppressors for manipulation. It also tries to gain social legitimacy through a kind of ‘victim metaphor’. In this way it is not only expected to trigger primitive impulses like panic, but also for that impulse to take the pilot’s seat in order to spread anti-LGBTI+ hostility in society,” he said.

“THE COMMON LANGUAGE OF RIGHT-WING AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENTS”

Tar said: “Just like the hostility to ‘homosexuals’ in the founding narrative of Nazi fascism, the politics of hostility produced in the founding myths of authoritarian and populist politics, through talk of ‘degendering’ and ‘LGBT ideology’, also holds an important place. From the early periods of German fascism, its targeting of sexuality studies and the gay liberation struggle, which were only taking their first baby steps, its efforts to raid research centres and destroy all records, and its use of the legal provision banning homosexuality in an even more oppressive way for a kind of ‘witch-hunt’ were moves tied to fascism’s founding myths. We can interpret this both as enemy law and as the activation of the preventive state within the German fascist state structure, which consisted of a normative state and a preventive state. The process that went as far as the murder of homosexuals marked with pink triangles in concentration camps became one of the bricks used to build the superior German nation. The narrative accompanying this process was the lie that ‘homosexuality is a deviation against nature’ as much as the lie that it is a threat to social order and national security. These two narratives should be seen as intertwined and mutually reinforcing lines, even if, from the standpoint of rational reason, they seem to contradict each other, just like in the dual state mechanism.”

Noting that these methods are being revived in Türkiye under the AKP-MHP government and its pro-government media, as well as globally by right-wing authoritarian regimes, Tar said: “And while doing this they see no problem in acting as if they are mocking our intelligence. The call of the LGBTI+ movement stands: the liberation of LGBTI+ people will free the whole of society. Anything else is politics of lies and deception that no one believes.”

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Kamu eliyle LGBTİ+ düşmanlığı, published in BirGün newspaper on January 14, 2026.