Press Release, 17 September 2026
Attack on Queer Life in Turkey – PEN Berlin Member Barbaros Altuğ Among Those Silenced
As part of the ongoing raids targeting LGBTQ organisations, venues and clubs in Turkey, the authorities have also had the social media accounts of Berlin-based writer Barbaros Altuğ blocked. The measure is based on a law that allows sweeping restrictions on online content, citing grounds including national security or public order.
“The Turkish authorities have been preparing for this for years. They now feel that nobody anywhere in the world stands behind LGBTQ people in Turkey,” says Barbaros Altuğ, a writer and member of PEN Berlin. “They think they can wipe everyone out effortlessly and without any significant resistance. We will prove them wrong.”
Barbaros Altuğ is an openly gay writer, literary critic and literary agent. He has lived in Berlin since 2017 and received a fellowship through PEN’s Writers in Exile programme.
“I want the voices of all the young people who are now in prison to be heard – simply because they refuse to be someone else,” says Altuğ, whose new novel Die dunkelste Nacht eines langen Winters (“The Darkest Night of a Long Winter”) was published in German by Orlanda Verlag this week. “They want to love and be loved as they are, as is their right.”
More than 160 people have been arrested in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities as part of the operation “My Family Is Safe”; pre-trial detention has so far been ordered in at least 81 cases. The accusations include “forming an association for the purpose of committing a crime”, “prostitution” and “obscenity”. In addition, more than 400 social media accounts have been blocked, effectively shutting those affected out of much of the public sphere. The restrictions affect not only LGBTQ activists and organisations, but also Amnesty International’s Turkey office, the respected left-wing daily Evrensel, the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), which works at the intersection of journalism and law, and journalists such as Şirin Payzın, a former CNN Türk anchor.
In its applications for pre-trial detention, the prosecution accuses those concerned of “enticing young people into being LGBTQ”. It claims this is contrary to “public morality” and “Turkish family values”.
Deniz Yücel, spokesperson for PEN Berlin, emphasises: “A few years ago, even comparatively limited measures, such as violently breaking up a Pride march, would provoke an outcry in Europe, particularly in Germany. Now we are facing not just an attack on opposition activists, but an attack on queer life as a whole in Turkey. Yet nobody seems to care.”
PEN Berlin stands in solidarity with its member Barbaros Altuğ and calls for the access restriction to be lifted and for an end to the political persecution of the LGBTQ community.
PEN Berlin. We stand by our word.