Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in Turkey face significant challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents. Homosexuality has not been a criminal offence since the Ottoman Empire adopted a new penal code in 1858, and transgender people have been able to change their legal gender since 1988.
However, Turkey has no comprehensive law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and LGBTQ are barred from serving openly in the military. Same sex relationships receive no legal recognition: same sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships are not available in Turkey, and same sex couples cannot adopt jointly or as joint parents.
When the 12th judicial reform package passed in 2026, provisions discriminating against LGBTQ people were removed from the bill, which made symbolic same sex weddings possible, though these carry no legal marital status. Because Turkish marriage law determines eligibility by the gender recorder in a person's civil registry rather than by trans status, individuals who have legally changed their registered gender may marry a partner of the opposite registered gender.
Istanbul hosted the first gay pride march held in a Muslim majority country in 2003, and annual marches in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities drew growing crowds through the 2010s, with the 2013 and 2014 Istanbul marches each attracting more than 100,000 participants. Since 2015 however, authorities have banned Pride events in Istanbul and other cities in most years, and police have used tear gas, water cannons and mass detentions against participants who defied the bans.
In ILGA-Europe's 2026 Rainbow Europe ranking, Turkey placed 47th out 49 countries assessed, ahead of only Azerbaijan and Russia. In early 2026, Turkish media reported the government was considering legislation criminalising public advocacy of "behaviour contrary to biological sex", though this provision was ultimately not included in that year's judicial reform package. Public attitudes have shifted gradually, surveys by Kadir Has University found support for equal rights for LGBTQ people rising from 33% in 2016 to 45% in 2020. While a 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that 25% of the Turks believed homosexuality should be accepted by society, against 57% opposed. In his 2023 winning speech, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused opposition parties of being pro-LGBTQ while labeling the LGBTQ+ community as "perverted movements".
History
During the Ottoman Empire
The Ottomans, before the 19th-century, did not base sexual identities on attraction to a specific gender but distinguished between active and passive partners, often distinguished as "the lover" and "the beloved". Therefore, choice of a partner was merely based on taste and not on sexual identity. This made certain types of same-sex attraction permissible, but this attraction was most often legitimized in a pederastic context.
By the late 19th century, homosexual contact started to decline and the focus of desire turned to young girls. Ahmet Cevdet Pasha stated:Woman-lovers have increased in number, while boy-beloveds have decreased. It is as if the People of Lot have been swallowed by the earth. The love and affinity that were, in Istanbul, notoriously and customarily directed towards young men have now been redirected towards girls, in accordance with the state of nature.Research shows that the decline is in close relationship to the criminalization of homosexuality in the Western world, which followed repression of the queer community.
Republican period
In the 1980s, the national government, whether democratically elected or as a result of a coup d'état, opposed the existence of a visible LGBTQ community, especially within the political context.
Some openly gay people were able to be successful in the 1980s. Murathan Mungan has been openly gay throughout his professional life as a successful poet and writer. However, many gay and bisexual men who lived during this period have since said in interviews that they felt pressured by social attitudes and government policy to remain in the closet about their sexual identity.
In the 1980s, the Radical Democratic Green Party expressed support for gay rights, including the work of a group of transgender people to protest police brutality. However, it was not until the 1990s that many members of the LGBTQ community in Turkey began to organise on behalf of their human rights.
In 1993, Lambda Istanbul was created to campaign on behalf of LGBTQ rights in Turkey. In 1994, the Freedom and Solidarity Party banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity within the party and nominated Demet Demir, a leading voice of the community, to successfully become the first transgender candidate for the local council elections in Istanbul.
In 1993, organisers were denied permission to hold an LGBTQ pride parade. Similar opposition was expressed by the government in 1995 and 1996 for an LGBTQ film festival and academic conference. Government officials cited vaguely worded laws designed to protect public morality as justification for refusing to allow these public events to take place.
In 1996, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling and removed a child from her lesbian mother on the grounds that homosexuality is "immoral".See report of Kaos GL: Turkey's LGBT History: The 1990s . Retrieved 16 October 2009.
Throughout the 1990s, reports by IHD, Turkey's Human Rights Association as well as international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International stated that transgender people were frequently harassed and beaten by police officers. One article even stated that police had set fire to an apartment block with many transgender people residing there.[The Guardian. "Turkey Turns on Its Decadent Past". Owen Bowcott, 1996]
Reports of harassment and violence against LGBTQ people still occur in the twenty-first century. In 2008, a gay Kurdish-Turk student, Ahmet Yıldız, was shot outside a café by his father and later died in the hospital.The German Democratic Turkey Forum (DTF) has prepared a report with details on the killing and the subsequent court case; accessed on 31 March 2011. Sociologists have called this Turkey's first publicised gay honour killing. The wish of the Turkish Government to join the European Union has put some pressure on the government to grant official recognition to LGBTQ rights. The report on progress in Turkey for the accession to the European Union of 14 October 2009, the European Commission for Enlargement wrote: The legal framework is not adequately aligned with the EU acquis... Homophobia has resulted in cases of physical and sexual violence. The killing of several transsexuals and transvestites is a worrying development. Courts have applied the principle of 'unjust provocation' in favour of perpetrators of crimes against transsexuals and transvestites.
In 2003, Turkey became the first Muslim-majority country in which a gay pride march was held. In Istanbul (since 2003) and in Ankara (since 2008) gay marches were being held each year with an increasing numbers of participation until 2015.
On 30 June 2013, Istanbul Pride parade attracted almost 100,000 people. The protesters were joined by Gezi Park protesters, making the 2013 Istanbul Pride the biggest pride event ever held in Turkey. The 2014 Istanbul pride attracted more than 100,000 people. The 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 pride parades were banned by local authorities, and participants were faced with police attacks. In June 2013, the first İzmir Pride took place with 2,000 participants. On 3 June 2018, the 6th İzmir Pride Parade peacefully took place with over 50,000 participants. Another pride took place in Antalya. Politicians from the main opposition party, CHP and another opposition party, BDP also lent their support to the demonstration. The pride march in Istanbul does not receive any support of the municipality or the government.
In 2009, amateur football referee Halil İbrahim Dinçdağ came out as gay and was subsequently banned from refereeing football matches. In December 2015, the Turkish Football Federation was ordered to pay 23,000 lira in compensation for dismissing Dinçdağ.
On 21 September 2011, the Minister of Family and Social Policies Fatma Şahin met with an LGBTQ organisation. She said that the government will actively work together with LGBTQ organisations. She submitted a proposal for the acceptance of LGBTQ individuals in the new constitution that Parliament planned to draft in the coming year. She was calling on Members of Parliament to handle the proposal positively. She asserted that "if freedom and equality is for everybody, then sexual orientation discrimination should be eliminated and the rights of these LGBTQ citizens should be recognised."
On 9 January 2012, a columnist named Serdar Arseven for an Islamist newspaper called Yeni Akit wrote an article calling LGBTQ people perverts. The Court of Cassation penalised Yeni Akit with 4,000 TL fine and Serdar Arseven with 2,000 TL for hate speech.
In May 2012, the BDP requested the writers of the new Turkish constitution to include same-sex marriage in that constitution. It was rejected by the biggest party in the Turkish Parliament, the AKP, and an opposition party, MHP, while supported by the main opposition party, the CHP.
On 29 May 2013, a parliamentary research motion regarding LGBTQ rights in Turkey was proposed and discussed in the parliament of Turkey. Despite support from pro-Kurdish BDP, secularist CHP, and the abstention of Turkish nationalist party MHP, the motion was rejected by votes of the ruling party AKP. AKP MP Türkan Dağoğlu cited the scientific articles on homosexuality published in the US in 1974 and said, "Homosexuality is an abnormality. Same-sex marriages may not be allowed. It would cause social deterioration." For the research motion, CHP MP Binnaz Toprak said, "In the 1970s there were scientists suggesting that black people were not as smart as white people in the US. Hence the science of today doesn't accept the findings of those times. Your sayings can not be allowed."
LGBT-themed DVDs can also be legally sold in Turkey, albeit DVDs with sexually explicit content may only be sold to people eighteen years of age or older. In 2013, a Turkish vendor was charged with selling "immoral" DVDs because the DVD movies featured gay sexually explicit content. Judge Mahmut Erdemli from the court in Istanbul overturned the criminal charges. He ruled that gay sex is natural, stated that an individual's sexual orientation should be respected, and cited examples of same-sex marriages in Europe and in the Americas.
In 2013, Grindr, a social networking and hookup app targeted to gay men, was banned by the Istanbul Anatolia 14th Criminal Court of Peace.
On 12 August 2013, the Constitutional Reconciliation Commission, which was drafting a new constitution of the Republic and was composed of four major parliamentary parties including Kurds, secularists, Islamists and nationalists, agreed to provide constitutional protection against discrimination for LGBTQ individuals. The draft was later cancelled.
On 17 July 2014, Turkey's Supreme Court ruled that referring to gays as "perverted" constitutes hate speech.
In November 2016, Turkey, along with Georgia, Israel, Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, East Timor and Vietnam, were the only Asian countries in the United Nations to vote in favor of the appointment of an independent expert to raise awareness of the discrimination faced by the LGBTQ community and to find ways to properly protect them.Anti-LGBTI push at U.N. falls short Erasing 76 Crimes
In June 2018, the embassy of Turkey, along with ambassadors from 51 countries signed an open letter of support for LGBTQ rights in Poland.