Human Rights Watch released a statement today to condemn the Istanbul police who violently intervened and detained 113 people on 25 June  as demonstrators made determined and creative efforts to hold the Istanbul Pride March. 

The march was banned for the ninth consecutive year,  as were all other pride events in the city, with the Istanbul governor stating on social media that there would be no permission for events that "threaten [the] institution of the family." 

In the western city of Izmir, where pride demonstrations were also banned, police detained at least 52 people.   

The bans also follow an intensification of hateful anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) discourse by officials around the May 2023 elections.

“Banning Pride celebrations and detaining people for attempting to march is a flagrant violation of the right to peaceful assembly and expression and further evidence of the Turkish government's vitriolic campaign against LGBT people,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, adding:  “Turkey should stop detaining and prosecuting Pride demonstrators, and reaffirm their fundamental right to peaceful protest in line with Turkey’s international obligations and its own laws.”

While public authorities in Turkey have comprehensively banned Pride marches and Pride Week events across the country, recent judicial decisions have found that these decisions are unlawful. In the last three years, eight courts – in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Mersin, and Adana – have ruled that the prohibition of Pride marches and Pride Week activities by public authorities without evidence and justification for the existence of a clear, concrete, and imminent danger constitutes a violation of Tukey’s Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Human Rights Watch has reviewed these decisions. However, because these rulings are issued long after the decisions to ban events, they come too late to ensure that LGBT people are able to exercise their right to assembly. Moreover, public authorities disregard the courts’ rulings. In June, after a trial that lasted about two years, the regional court of appeal upheld the acquittal of 19 people who had been detained in the Istanbul Pride March in 2021 and prosecuted for holding an unauthorized assembly in violation of the law on assemblies and demonstrations (law no. 2911).

After the mass detention of 373 people attempting to assemble for an Istanbul Pride March in 2022, the Istanbul Prosecutor's Office issued a decision six months later not to prosecute them.