Why do authoritarian regimes target the LGBTQ+ community?

A recent crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community in Turkey is symptomatic of a wider rights regression, according to experts. It's worse under authoritarian regimes, but why is it such a popular policy for these states?

Raids on gay bars and homes, hundreds of arrests and rhetoric about state responsibility to "protect families and children." Turkey's latest crackdown on LGBTQ+ communities is not such an outlier.

"It's not uncommon, we've seen it before," Dr Koen Slootmaeckers, from the international politics department at City St George's, University of London, told DW.

"Turkey's been doing this for a while, but it seems like a much higher intensity," Slootmaeckers said. "We've seen it in different places too. I think what we are seeing with the rise of the far right is a crackdown on anything that looks different. It's really about an us versus them narrative and a reinforcing of 'traditional family values.'"

Those values were cited by Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek after the weekend's crackdown: "As per the duty to protect families and children given to the state by the constitution, no criminal organization, abuse network or illegal activity which targets children, youths or families will be tolerated!"

Attack on LGBTQ+ rights accelerating

The reference to protecting children from harm is also typical of authoritarian government actions against LGBTQ+ communities on a wider scale, added Slootmaeckers, whose work often focuses on gender and sexuality policy.

"They're trying to bring back discourses around pedophilia and homosexuality being intertwined. It's not always direct but there is a definite tendency."

Sentiments such as those expressed by Gurlek have become increasingly normalized of late, according to a 2026 report from South Africa-based civil rights nonprofit, Civicus.

"Women's and LGBTQI+ people's rights are under the most coordinated and wide-ranging attack in decades," the report reads.

It adds that "The USA has set the global narrative" under President Donald Trump and points to the recent criminalizing of same sex relationships in Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago among its evidence of rights regressions.

While the methods of oppression vary, Slootmaeckers said the underlying reasons are often, at least partly, opportunistic rather than ideological.

Scapegoating a common strategy

"In authoritarian regimes, as we've seen in Hungary and Poland in the past, there is often a tendency when political power becomes threatened to use these issues as an easy way to scapegoat and distract — by claiming that LGBT people are a threat to the social fabric because they challenge family and the future of the nation, so to speak. It's an easy way of creating a scapegoat and often distracting from other crises," he said.

Turkey was ranked 47 of 49 countries in the annual Rainbow Map compiled by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. Countries ranking lower means laws and polcies there aren't LGBTQ+ friendly.

But, for many observers it is countries that are dropping in such rankings that are troubling. One of those is Serbia. It has gradually slipped to 29th spot, below the European average.

Groups associated with President Aleksandar Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party, SNS, have been linked to a wave of violence against an LGBTQ+ community which feels increasingly marginalized. A recent survey from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that 80% of respondents said they avoided holding the hand of their partner in public, for example.

EU hopes put up 'guardrails' amid violence in Serbia

While Serbia is not one of the 64 countries around the world which have laws that criminalize homosexuality, some of which carry the death penalty, there is a definite sense of unease.

"In the Balkans, most countries still want to join the EU, so there are some kind of guardrails on how far they can go. But we see things like [Vucic] trying to cancel [pan-European LGBTQ+ event] EuroPride in 2022 in Belgrade when he felt threatened surrounding Kosovo," said Slootmaeckers, who wrote a book called "Coming in: Sexual politics and EU accession in Serbia" in 2025.

"We can see this tactic of pandering to family values and then positioning LGBT rights as an expensive frivolity, as a means of redirecting the attention of people from the actual political problem," Slootmaeckers said.

"I think across Europe, not just in the Balkans or Eastern Europe, we see the return of homophobia and transphobia. We see a culture where anything considered 'out there' is threatened and it becomes normalized that we can exclude people again."

Exclusion appears to be the word for many in the Turkish LGBTQ+ community, with rights group Kaos GL, whose offices were raided, calling the latest crackdown "state-led discrimination, politics of fear and the dismantling of civil society."

For those living under authoritarian regimes elsewhere, the threat of similar scenes continues to loom.