Turkey’s Year of Family: Religious Affairs Directorate targets LGBTI+ community in Friday sermon
Following President Erdoğan's declaration of 2025 as the "Year of the Family" in opposition to LGBTI+ communities, the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) included statements targeting LGBTI+ individuals in Friday sermons delivered in mosques across the country.
Duvar English
The Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) on Jan. 10 targeted the LGBTI+ community in its Friday sermon titled "To Protect the Human Nature is to Protect the Family" using terms like "desexualization," frequently employed by the government to marginalize the community.
Earlier this week, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared 2025 as the "Year of the Family" and once again singled out LGBTI+ individuals as a focus of his rhetoric.
In the official translation of the sermon, the Diyanet stated, "Today, one of the greatest threats facing humanity is the attempt to erase the natural essence of men and women. One such effort, known as desexualization, seeks to distort the spiritual and physical characteristics of human beings, aiming to transform women into men and men into women.”
The directorate sends this sermon to all the mosques around the country to be read to the congregation before the Friday prayer, a weekly religious activity attended by Muslims.
Nearly the entire sermon focused on targeting the LGBTI+ community without explicitly naming it, with statements such as: “It is an endeavor to disregard divine will and reduce humanity to an entity devoid of identity. It is an act of encouraging alcohol consumption, drugs, and illegitimate relationships, leading generations toward disaster by exploiting children and darkening the future of humanity.”
Diyanet centered the family as President Erdoğan to target the already marginalized community in the country.
The Population Policies Council convenes, targeting LGBTI+s
The Population Policies Council, established by a presidential decree last month, held its first meeting on Jan. 9, according to a report by LGBTI+ news portal KaosGL. The meeting was attended by ministers and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmakers.
Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz also gave a presentation before the council meeting. During the presentation, which was open to the press, Yılmaz expressed concern over the declining fertility rate.
In his speech, Yılmaz also used the term “degendering.” Echoing President Erdoğan’s earlier remarks, Yılmaz labeled the LGBTI+ community as a "threat to the family."
Yılmaz stated, “We must closely examine the increasing attacks on family values through global media and social media channels, as well as the systematic efforts aimed at genderlessness in societies.”
New legal regulations
The vice president announced that the Population Policies Council would prepare a specific action plan and implement new legal regulations. Additionally, Yılmaz hinted at measures against cesarean births.
Yılmaz stated, “We will place significant emphasis on education, culture, and communication policies that highlight our values in response to global attacks aimed at weakening our family structure and promoting genderlessness. We are committed to addressing threats to the continuation of healthy generations, including the erosion of the family institution, declining fertility rates, and the genderlessness trend.”
Yılmaz also emphasized the critical importance of the Population Policies Council for the country’s “national survival.”