Turkey’s anti-LGBTI+ crackdown draws meek EU criticism

Civil society and politicians in Europe have voiced concerns over a wave of arrests targeting LGBTI+ activists and protesters in Turkey, following raids on rights organisations and businesses in several provinces. A least 31 protesters were arrested on Tuesday (16 September) as they showed their support for leaders detained earlier this week in raids of LGBTI+ associations’ offices, Reuters reported. But the lack of any condemnation of Ankara by the European Commission has prompted harsh criticism in the European Parliament. “The silence of the commission is damaging the image of the European Union,” Spanish socialist MEP Nacho Sánchez Amor, a member of the parliament group focused on relations with Turkey, told EUobserver. “We are accused rightly of double standards, and we are losing our leverage in civil society in Turkey … This is a loss that is going to cost decades to repair,” he said. “They [the commission] are always using the soft tone not to create problems with relations with Turkey and [Turkish president Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan, ” he added. “This is a big, big, big mistake,” he added. Turkey is still an EU enlargement candidate, but its talks were de facto frozen in 2016 after Erdoğan's mass-scale crackdown in reaction to a coup. But Ankara is still getting €290m in EU pre-enlargement funds in 2025 to 2027, as well as €1bn a year for help to host Syrian refugees, giving Brussels potential leverage. Meanwhile, in one example of the "soft" tone, a spokesman for the European Commission earlier this week during a press briefing: "The commission is concerned about the recent arrests and legal proceedings initiated against LGBTIQ+ activists, human rights associations and businesses."