When “Family Values” Become Population Policy Türkiye’s Fertility Crisis, Ailem Güvende

Paula Sadler

43 minutes ago

37 min read

Türkiye’s Fertility Crisis, Ailem Güvende, LGBTQIA+ Rights, and the Politics of Demographic Fear

A Question-Led Study and Opinion Essay

Research current through September 21, 2026

I did not begin this inquiry with a predetermined conclusion.

I began with questions.

What is happening to LGBTQIA+ people in Türkiye?

Why is the government raiding LGBTQ organizations?

What does something called Ailem Güvende — “My Family Is Safe” — actually mean?

What does LGBTQ identity have to do with whether heterosexual couples have children?

Is Türkiye really experiencing a fertility crisis?

If it is, why are people having fewer children?

Can government payments persuade them to have more?

What does it actually cost to raise a family in Türkiye?

How many children already live in poverty?

What happens to children who cannot remain with their families?

What about violence, political instability, war, economic insecurity and people's confidence in the future?

Who designed these policies?

Who is implementing them?

Are similar things happening in Russia, China, Georgia, India and the United States?

And eventually I arrived at a much larger question:

When a government faces complicated demographic, economic and social problems, why does a relatively small minority of LGBTQIA+ people so often become part of the explanation?

The answers led me somewhere troubling.

The fertility problem is real.

The economic pressures are real.

Population aging is real.

National-security concerns are real.

The challenges of raising children are real.

But after following the evidence, I have found no demographic evidence demonstrating that LGBTQIA+ people caused Türkiye's fertility decline, nor evidence that arresting, censoring, stigmatizing or restricting LGBTQIA+ people will cause other citizens to have more children.

That distinction is the heart of this study.

What Is Actually Happening in Türkiye?

Türkiye is experiencing a genuine demographic transformation.

In 2025, the country recorded 895,374 live births. Its total fertility rate fell to 1.42 children per woman, down from 2.38 in 2001. The fertility rate has been below the approximate replacement level of 2.1 for nine consecutive years.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government has responded with an enormous national project.

The years 2026 through 2035 have officially been designated Türkiye's “Decade of Family and Population.” The government's vision identifies five priorities: protecting the family and future generations, promoting marriage, increasing fertility, raising young people while providing for older people, and encouraging rural development and a more balanced geographic distribution of population.

Significantly, the government's own framework says those goals will be pursued through institutional capacity, legislation, data infrastructure, diplomacy and communication.

This is therefore much more than a baby-bonus program.

It is a decade-long effort to influence Türkiye's demographic future.

And in September 2026, that demographic and “family” agenda became directly connected to a sweeping law-enforcement operation called Ailem Güvende — “My Family Is Safe.”

Justice Minister Akın Gürlek announced that the operation involved judicial proceedings concerning 162 suspects, nine associations and 13 businesses across 15 provinces, coordinated through the chief public prosecutors' offices of Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Aydın and Mersin, with Türkiye's National Police and Gendarmerie participating.

The Justice Ministry explicitly stated that the operation was being conducted in accordance with Erdoğan's 2026–2035 Family and Population vision and Presidential Circular No. 2026/4.

The government says these investigations concern allegations including facilitating prostitution, obscenity, exposing children to harmful material, drugs, unlawful activity and questionable financial flows. The Justice Ministry also specifically referred to investigations concerning organizations it accused of promoting “LGBT” activity and immorality.

Human Rights Watch describes the same events very differently.

It reports coordinated raids between September 12 and 14 targeting seven LGBT rights groups, two HIV organizations, bars, nightclubs and individuals, with at least 112 people arrested and 82 still detained by court order when HRW published its September 18 report. HRW characterized the campaign as an effort to criminalize and marginalize LGBTQ people under the banner of protecting family values.

This distinction matters.

The Turkish government says it is protecting children, families and public order.

LGBTQ and human-rights organizations say LGBTQ people and organizations are being subjected to a politically driven crackdown.

My question became:

What does any of this have to do with a fertility rate of 1.42?

Is Türkiye's Fertility Crisis Real?

Yes.

That part should not be dismissed.

A fertility rate of 1.42 is far below replacement level, and Türkiye's decline has been occurring for years rather than months.

Governments have legitimate reasons to be concerned about sustained very-low fertility.

An aging population can eventually mean fewer workers supporting more retirees, greater pressure on pensions and healthcare, fewer taxpayers, shortages in some occupations, slower economic growth and changes in the relationship between working-age and dependent populations.

Population is also connected to national economic and geopolitical power.

Erdoğan himself has framed national strength broadly. In discussing Türkiye's family and population vision, he has argued that a nation's strength cannot be understood merely through its military, economy or technological capacity but also through its people, children and the values transmitted to future generations.

That is important evidence because it demonstrates that the government's concern is not simply about private family happiness. Population is being discussed as an element of the country's future strength.

But it would go beyond the available evidence to conclude from this alone that Türkiye's fertility program is secretly a project to manufacture future soldiers.

Population provides future soldiers, certainly, but also workers, taxpayers, doctors, teachers, engineers, caregivers, entrepreneurs and consumers.

The broader concept is demographic power.

And that leads to another question.

If Türkiye needs more children, why aren't Turkish people having the number of children they say they want?

Do Turkish People Actually Want More Children?

This may be one of the most important findings in the entire investigation.

According to UNFPA Türkiye, previous national research found that the average ideal number of children was approximately 2.8, while actual fertility has fallen to 1.42.

UNFPA specifically interprets that gap as evidence that the problem is not simply that people no longer want children. Many people apparently cannot realize the family size they would prefer.

That changes the question completely.

If people say they ideally want approximately 2.8 children but actually have 1.42, then perhaps the central public-policy question should not be:

How do we convince people to value families?

Perhaps it should be:

What is preventing people who already want children from having them?

And once I started asking that question, the economic numbers became difficult to ignore.

What Does It Cost to Live in Türkiye?

Türkiye's official annual consumer inflation rate in August 2026 was 31.51%.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages were up 33.79% year over year.

Transportation was up 35.08%.

Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels were up 39.77%.

Türkiye's official 2026 net minimum wage is ₺28,075.50 per month.

Now compare that with calculations from TÜRK-İŞ, Türkiye's largest labor confederation.

For August 2026, TÜRK-İŞ estimated that a four-person family in Ankara required approximately ₺37,388 per month merely for adequate food.

Its estimated total monthly cost for a four-person household to cover food plus housing, utilities, clothing, transportation, education, health and other basic necessities was approximately ₺121,786.

It estimated a single worker's monthly living cost at ₺48,305.

This TÜRK-İŞ measure is not Türkiye's official government poverty line. It is a labor-confederation household-cost benchmark.

But the comparison remains striking.

One net minimum wage of ₺28,075 is far below TÜRK-İŞ's ₺48,305 estimate for one person's monthly living cost.

Two minimum-wage workers together earn approximately ₺56,151 — still less than half of TÜRK-İŞ's ₺121,786 basic-needs estimate for a four-person family.

And that estimate concerns four people.

Türkiye's political leadership frequently promotes larger families, including three children.

A household composed of two parents and three children would contain five people.

That doesn't prove nobody can afford three children. Household incomes vary enormously.

But it does make affordability impossible to dismiss.

What About Childcare and Women's Employment?

Another obstacle appears when one parent must either stop working or pay for childcare.

The OECD found that in Türkiye in 2023, only 27% of mothers with children under age three were employed, compared with 58% of women without children.

The OECD also found significant shortages in early-childhood education and care, especially for children under three, with private provision carrying much of the burden. It specifically recommends expanding affordable childcare as a way to support mothers' employment and family well-being.

Now imagine the decision from the perspective of a young couple.

They may want children.

But rent is expensive.

Food prices keep climbing.

One person's income may not support the household.

Two incomes may be necessary.

Then a child arrives.

Who stays home?

Who pays for childcare?

What happens to the mother's employment prospects?

What happens when a second child arrives?

Or a third?

These aren't ideological questions.

They are household-budget questions.

And they can exist regardless of whether an LGBTQ person lives next door.

Can Government Payments Solve the Problem?

Türkiye is trying.

The country's new birth benefits provide ₺5,000 once for a first child, ₺1,500 per month for a second child until age five, and ₺5,000 per month for a third and subsequent child until age five.

By July 2026, Family and Social Services Minister Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş reported that more than 1.2 million children had benefited from the program.

These payments may genuinely help families.

I understand why governments provide child allowances, parental benefits and financial assistance. Countries across the political spectrum do so.

But there is a methodological problem with claiming success merely because recipients subsequently have children.

Receiving money after having a baby does not establish that the money caused the baby to be born.

A couple who already planned to have a child may simply receive a benefit that did not alter their reproductive decision.

Researchers call this a counterfactual problem.

To determine whether pronatalist payments create additional births, we have to ask how many children would have been born without the payments.

That requires comparison groups and longer-term research.

Counting babies born to participating families is not the same thing as counting births created by the policy.

That distinction matters enormously when governments use public money to pursue demographic objectives.

What About the Children Türkiye Already Has?

This was the next question that changed my thinking.

If protecting children and families is the central objective, how are Türkiye's existing children doing?

Türkiye had approximately 21.4 million children in 2025.

And according to TurkStat, 36.8% of them were at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

The corresponding figure for the entire population was 27.9%.

That means more than one in three Turkish children is already living with at least one of the conditions included in the European-style “at risk of poverty or social exclusion” measure.

That does not mean 36.8% are starving or homeless. The measure includes relative income poverty, material or social deprivation and very low household work intensity.

Nevertheless, it describes a very large vulnerable child population.

Türkiye also reported 15,508 children living in institutional or residential state care in 2025 and 10,841 children living with foster families.

That does not mean those children are all orphans. Children enter state care for many reasons, including neglect, abuse, abandonment, parental incapacity and family crisis. TurkStat reported only 4,907 children who had lost both parents.

Official security statistics also reveal substantial numbers of children coming into contact with authorities as victims of crime.

These statistics cannot tell us the true prevalence of child abuse because abuse and neglect are often hidden and administrative records capture only cases that reach authorities.

But they remind us that “protecting children” involves much more than increasing the number of births.

It requires protecting the children who are already alive.

So another measure of Türkiye's Family and Population Decade should be:

Does child poverty fall?

Does family homelessness fall?

Does abuse fall?

Does neglect fall?

Do fewer children require state care?

Does affordable childcare expand?

Do children's educational and health outcomes improve?

A successful family policy should ultimately be judged not only by how many children are born, but also by how well those children live.

Does Social Stability Matter to Fertility?

People do not make reproductive decisions in a vacuum.

They think about their jobs, homes, marriages, finances and futures.

They also think about the society into which their children will be born.

Türkiye is not currently in a civil war, and describing it as such would be inaccurate.

But the country has experienced decades of conflict involving the PKK, major political polarization, large demonstrations and arrests, tensions involving Kurdish political representation, instability immediately beyond its Syrian border, and continuing debates over civil liberties and the independence of institutions.

At the same time, the government is attempting a significant new peace/disarmament process concerning the PKK.

These realities do not prove that political instability caused Türkiye's fertility decline.

Nor can we currently establish that the Ailem Güvende operation itself will lower fertility.

But confidence about the future is a legitimate demographic variable.

UNFPA's international demographic research involving more than 109,000 young adults across 73 countries found that financial security and stable employment were among the leading considerations people associated with parenthood.

A society seeking more births therefore has reason to care about much more than reproductive messaging.

Economic security matters.

Housing matters.

Employment matters.

Childcare matters.

Social stability matters.

Trust matters.

Hope about the future matters.

So Why Are LGBTQIA+ People Part of This?

This is the question I keep returning to.

I have found abundant evidence showing that governments can associate LGBTQ visibility with changes in traditional family structures.

I have found political speeches condemning “gender ideology.”

I have found laws restricting LGBTQ expression in the name of children.

I have found governments arguing that nontraditional sexuality threatens national values.

What I have not found is demographic evidence establishing that LGBTQIA+ people are the cause of Türkiye's fertility rate falling to 1.42.

That is a critical difference.

Sexual and gender diversity has existed throughout human history, even though modern categories such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer developed much later.

LGBTQ people can also be parents.

Some have biological children.

Some have children from previous heterosexual relationships.

Some use assisted reproduction where permitted.

Some adopt or foster where permitted.

Some do not want children — just as some heterosexual people do not want children.

The existence of LGBTQIA+ people therefore cannot simply be equated with the absence of reproduction.

More importantly, Türkiye's fertility decline reflects reproductive decisions occurring across a population of more than 86 million people.

The country's own data show enormous fertility differences internally. Şanlıurfa recorded a fertility rate of 3.15 in 2025, Şırnak 2.53 and Mardin 2.23 while the national average was 1.42.

Such variation points toward the influence of economic, cultural, educational, geographic and household factors.

It is far more complicated than “LGBTQ people exist, therefore people stopped having children.”

Who Is Responsible for the Current Turkish Program?

Responsibility also requires precision.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan established the overarching 2026–2035 Family and Population Decade.

The Ministry of Family and Social Services, led by Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş, coordinates significant parts of the broader family and population strategy. The ministry says its vision document was prepared under its coordination and includes monitoring changes in family and population structures and analyzing their causes.

Justice Minister Akın Gürlek publicly announced Ailem Güvende and explicitly connected the operation with Erdoğan's family and population vision.

The Chief Public Prosecutors' Offices in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Aydın and Mersin coordinated investigations.

The Turkish National Police and Turkish Gendarmerie — Jandarma — conducted enforcement activity. Jandarma and Gendarmerie are two names for the same institution.

Other senior AK Party officials have publicly promoted traditional-family policies or criticized LGBTQ visibility.

But that does not mean every politician who supports traditional family policy personally planned the September raids.

Those distinctions matter.

An evidence-based investigation should attribute responsibility for actions only where documentation establishes it.

That same principle will guide the open letter that follows this study.

Is Türkiye an Isolated Case?

No.

But neither is every country doing the same thing.

Once I began looking beyond Türkiye, I found recurring political language across very different governments:

family

children

traditional values

biological sex

demographic survival

national strength

gender ideology

population decline

The legal consequences, however, vary enormously.

That distinction is essential.

Russia: The Connection Is Explicit

Russia provides one of the clearest examples.

President Vladimir Putin's 2022 Decree No. 809 on traditional Russian spiritual and moral values describes strong family, marriage and large families as traditional values.

The same decree identifies promotion of “non-traditional sexual relations” as part of what it calls a destructive ideology undermining the traditional family.

Then it explicitly states that such ideological influence poses a threat to Russia's demographic situation.

Here the demographic connection is not something critics invented.

It appears in the government's own policy document.

Russia has subsequently combined pronatalist family policy with increasingly severe restrictions affecting LGBTQ people.

Its demographic strategy through 2036 promotes childbirth, large families and traditional family values. Its implementation plan even directs special demographic attention toward Russian macroregions possessing “geopolitical and strategic significance for national security.”

Russia's national development goals similarly connect preservation of population, family support, sovereignty and national security, while establishing fertility targets of 1.6 by 2030 and 1.8 by 2036.

This provides significant evidence for a broader proposition:

Some governments do see population size and fertility as components of national power and security.

It does not prove that every pronatalist policy is secretly military recruitment.

But it does show that “family values” and national strategic interests can coexist within the same demographic policy.

Georgia: “Family Values” Written Directly Into Law

Georgia went further in making the terminology explicit.

Its law is literally titled:

“Law of Georgia on the Protection of Family Values and Minors.”

The statute defines the family it protects around the union of a man and woman, defines male and female according to hereditary genetic characteristics, and restricts what it calls the “popularisation” of same-sex relationships and identities differing from biological sex.

Whatever one's political position on the law, its architecture demonstrates something important for this study:

The concepts of family protection, children, biological sex and LGBTQ restrictions are being legally joined together.

China: Population Engineering Without the Same Explicit LGBTQ Theory

China requires more nuance.

For decades, China used state power to reduce births.

Today, it is doing almost the opposite.

China moved to a three-child policy as its population aged and fertility fell. Official documents describe population development as central to economic modernization and China's long-term national development, and they call for reducing the costs of childbirth, childcare and education.

China also restricts LGBTQ expression and association. Human Rights Watch documented renewed censorship of LGBTQ-themed social-media accounts, films and Pride-related activities in 2026.

But I have not found a Chinese national policy document comparable to Russia's decree explicitly asserting that LGBTQ people caused China's fertility crisis.

That distinction matters.

China demonstrates something slightly different:

A government can treat reproduction as an instrument of national demographic planning while separately restricting LGBTQ public life.

And China's historical reversal contains an important lesson.

When the government believed there were too many births, state policy discouraged births.

When the government came to believe there were too few births, state policy encouraged births.

The direction changed.

The state's desire to influence population remained.

That suggests that the deeper issue may sometimes be less about an eternal principle called “family values” and more about government attempts to produce the demographic outcome it believes the nation requires at a particular moment in history.

The United States: Similar Language, Different Legal Conditions

The United States also belongs in this comparison, but accuracy requires keeping it in a different category from Russia or Türkiye.

President Donald Trump's January 20, 2025 executive order is titled:

“Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

It directs the federal executive branch to recognize two sexes under the administration's definitions, states that gender identity is not included within its definition of sex, changes the treatment of sex on federal identification documents, directs federal agencies to remove material that it considers to promote “gender ideology,” and rescinds several previous federal LGBTQ policies.

Additional federal policies have applied those definitions in education, government operations and athletics.

The rhetorical resemblance to campaigns elsewhere — gender ideology, children, sex, family and traditional social categories — deserves examination.

But the United States is not presently equivalent to Russia or Türkiye in its methods of enforcement.

The United States has a federal constitutional system, independent courts, state governments with their own laws, continuing civil-rights litigation and substantial legal protections that differ dramatically by jurisdiction. There is no American equivalent to Russia's designation of an international LGBT movement as extremist, nor is the federal government conducting a Turkish-style nationwide Ailem Güvende operation against LGBTQ organizations.

Similar political language does not make legal systems identical.

It does, however, make comparison worthwhile.

India: A Particularly Complicated Counterexample

India is especially interesting because it is now the world's most populous country.

Consensual same-sex relationships were decriminalized by India's Supreme Court in 2018.

India also spent years moving toward greater legal recognition of transgender people.

But the picture changed significantly in 2026.

India adopted amendments changing transgender legal recognition and eliminating or restricting the earlier self-identification framework, requiring greater medical involvement. The changes are currently being challenged before India's Supreme Court.

Transgender and hijra Indians also continue to experience discrimination and violence despite formal legal protections. A 2026 UNDP assessment described continuing barriers including anti-trans violence, employment discrimination and difficulties accessing justice.

So India is not a perfect model of LGBTQ inclusion.

But it does reveal something important.

The world's largest national population exists in a country where consensual homosexuality is legal.

That alone demonstrates that the existence of LGBTQ people is not inherently incompatible with an enormous national population.

Is There Really a Global “Race to Populate”?

This became one of my larger questions.

I began wondering whether today's pronatalist movements are fundamentally about fear:

fear of population decline,

fear of aging,

fear of losing workers,

fear of declining geopolitical importance,

fear of neighboring populations growing faster,

fear of losing military capacity,

fear of another nation becoming economically or strategically dominant.

There is evidence supporting part of that hypothesis.

Governments including Russia and China explicitly connect population trends with national development, sovereignty, strategic position or security. Türkiye's leadership similarly discusses population within a broader conception of national strength.

But the evidence does not establish that these programs exist primarily to produce male soldiers.

Modern states need far more than armies.

They need taxpayers.

They need engineers.

They need healthcare workers.

They need manufacturing workers.

They need scientists.

They need caregivers.

They need consumers.

They need people capable of financing pension systems.

They need a working-age population.

So I would describe the phenomenon more broadly as demographic competition and demographic anxiety.

Military capacity may be one component.

Economic and geopolitical capacity are larger ones.

That distinction actually makes the argument stronger because it does not require speculation about a hidden military plan.

The national-power connection is already visible in governments' own documents.

Then Why the LGBTQIA+ Scapegoat?

This is where I reach my own interpretation.

I cannot prove what is inside the minds of Erdoğan, Putin, Trump, Xi Jinping or any other political leader.

I cannot empirically establish that every policy discussed here is secretly motivated by hatred, greed, fear or a desire for control.

Human motives are rarely that simple.

Governments themselves give other explanations: protecting children, protecting women, strengthening families, preserving culture, promoting demographic stability, addressing aging, protecting national security and responding to public concerns.

Those explanations should be reported accurately.

But there is another observable phenomenon.

When a complicated social problem is attributed to a minority population without demonstrating that the minority caused the problem, that raises the classic question of scapegoating.

And that is what concerns me most.

Türkiye's fertility crisis has multiple documented structural components:

high living costs,

rapid inflation,

housing expenses,

employment insecurity,

childcare shortages,

changes in women's education and employment,

later marriage,

later childbirth,

urbanization,

economic uncertainty,

and the enormous lifetime cost of raising children.

At the same time, 36.8% of children already living in Türkiye are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

Against that background, what demographic problem is solved by raiding an HIV organization?

What housing problem is solved by arresting a transgender woman?

What childcare shortage is solved by blocking an LGBTQ website?

What food price is reduced by closing an LGBTQ association?

What happens to a heterosexual couple's rent because their gay neighbor becomes less visible?

How does imprisoning an LGBTQ activist create affordable childcare?

Where is the causal mechanism?

Those are not rhetorical questions merely for effect.

They are empirical questions that governments pursuing policies affecting people's fundamental rights should be able to answer.

A Minority With Limited Power Is an Easy Target

There is no reliable official census telling us precisely what percentage of Türkiye's population is LGBTQIA+.

That uncertainty is important.

We should not manufacture a number.

But LGBTQIA+ people plainly constitute a minority of the population.

Minority status often means less voting power, less economic power, fewer representatives in government and fewer institutions capable of defending the group when political pressure increases.

That vulnerability can make minorities particularly susceptible to narratives presenting them as responsible for problems vastly larger than their demographic footprint.

History repeatedly demonstrates the political usefulness of an “other”:

a population portrayed as immoral,

dangerous,

foreign,

corrupting,

diseased,

anti-family,

anti-religious,

or threatening to children.

Once a group is defined primarily as a social danger rather than as individual human beings, restrictions that would otherwise be difficult to justify can become easier to present as protection.

That is why language matters.

We Have Seen the Language Before

Historical comparisons must be handled responsibly.

Türkiye in 2026 is not Nazi Germany.

The United States in 2026 is not Nazi Germany.

Russia, China, Georgia and India are not interchangeable with Nazi Germany.

Historical analogy becomes dangerous when it erases enormous differences in scale, law, violence and political context.

But history can still warn us about mechanisms.

Nazi Germany is particularly relevant to this investigation for one very specific reason:

the Nazi regime explicitly connected homosexuality with fertility and national strength.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents that the Nazis considered gay men a threat to the German birth rate and therefore to the fate of the German nation.

Approximately 100,000 arrests occurred under Paragraph 175 during the Nazi period, with around 53,400 convictions. Scholars estimate that between 5,000 and 15,000 men categorized as homosexual were sent to concentration camps.

The Holocaust Museum explains that Nazi leaders believed homosexual men might “seduce” heterosexual men, reduce reproduction and weaken Germany. Gay men were also portrayed as insufficiently masculine and therefore less useful as soldiers.

This historical fact should make modern societies especially cautious whenever governments begin linking a sexual minority with falling birth rates and national decline.

The comparison is not:

Türkiye is Nazi Germany.

The legitimate historical question is:

What happens when states begin describing minorities as demographic threats?

The Persecution Is Older Than the Twentieth Century

The history also predates modern LGBTQ terminology.

For centuries, religious and secular authorities criminalized behaviors now associated with homosexuality.

In parts of medieval and early-modern Europe, “sodomy” was punished through secular courts and, in some places, inquisitorial systems. Oxford historian Noel Malcolm notes that secular sodomy legislation appeared in Spain from the twelfth century and spread elsewhere, with death frequently prescribed in law; the Aragonese and Portuguese Inquisitions handled many such cases, sometimes imposing years of forced galley labor.

Those historical societies did not understand sexual orientation and gender identity exactly as we do today.

It would therefore be inaccurate simply to project the modern acronym “LGBTQIA+” backward onto everyone prosecuted for sodomy.

But the history demonstrates centuries of institutional punishment directed at forms of sexuality and gender expression that violated prevailing religious or social norms.

Colonialism spread some of those laws around the world.

Human Rights Watch has documented how Britain's Section 377 model was imposed throughout large parts of its empire, helping create criminal laws against consensual same-sex behavior that survived long after colonial rule ended.

The remarkable irony is that governments sometimes defend such laws today as expressions of indigenous tradition even when important components of the criminal codes themselves originated in European colonial rule.

The Global Situation Today

This is not merely historical.

According to ILGA World's June 2026 global legal mapping, 65 United Nations member states still criminalize consensual same-sex sexual activity.

In seven UN member states, the death penalty is legally prescribed in at least some circumstances for consensual same-sex acts, with legal uncertainty surrounding its potential application in five more.

At least 63 member states maintain restrictions affecting expression concerning sexual and gender diversity, and at least 61 create legal barriers affecting LGBTQ organizations.

At the same time, the world is not moving in only one direction.

Thirty-seven UN member states plus Taiwan recognize marriage equality, and other jurisdictions continue expanding protections.

So there is no single unified global conspiracy.

There is instead a global contest over sexuality, gender, family, religion, reproduction and state power.

Some societies are expanding LGBTQ rights.

Others are restricting them.

Some are doing both simultaneously in different areas of law.

That complexity should not prevent us from recognizing recurring patterns where they genuinely exist.

Is This “Erasure”?

For me, this word is important.

Erasure does not require physically killing every person in a group.

A government can attempt to remove a population from public visibility by restricting organizations, censoring speech, removing legal recognition, blocking websites, prohibiting public events, restricting identity documents, closing institutions or making public identification dangerous.

When those measures occur, I believe erasure is a meaningful moral and sociological term.

It describes an attempt to make a population less visible, less organized, less legally recognized or less able to participate openly in society.

That is different from claiming every act of erasure constitutes genocide under international criminal law.

And that distinction brings me to the most difficult word in this entire discussion.

Is This Genocide?

During this investigation, I found myself reaching for the word genocide.

I understand why.

When one looks across centuries of imprisonment, torture, religious condemnation, forced medical treatment, criminalization, concentration camps, executions and campaigns portraying sexual and gender minorities as threats to society, it can feel like one continuous human effort to eliminate difference.

But international law gives genocide a much narrower definition.

Under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide requires specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, accompanied by one or more defined acts.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are not independently listed among the Convention's protected group categories.

Therefore I cannot responsibly declare that every systematic campaign against LGBTQIA+ people legally constitutes genocide under the Genocide Convention.

That does not mean severe anti-LGBTQ persecution falls outside international criminal law.

The Rome Statute's crimes-against-humanity framework includes persecution against identifiable groups when the required elements of a widespread or systematic attack and severe deprivation of fundamental rights are satisfied. The International Criminal Court's Office of the Prosecutor has also developed a specific policy concerning gender persecution.

Whether particular conduct meets those legal thresholds is a question for evidence, investigation and competent legal institutions.

So I make a distinction.

When I speak morally about centuries of attempted erasure, I am describing a historical pattern as I see it.

When I use the legal term genocide, I recognize that international law asks a considerably narrower question and requires specific evidence concerning protected-group status, prohibited acts and intent.

That distinction does not weaken the humanitarian concern.

It makes the argument more precise.

LGBTQIA+ People Are Not the Fertility Problem

After following these questions, this is the conclusion I personally reach:

LGBTQIA+ people are not Türkiye's demographic problem.

The data show a fertility problem.

They show an affordability problem.

They show a childcare problem.

They show a major gap between the number of children people say they ideally want and the number they actually have.

They show significant child poverty.

They show substantial pressures on women attempting to combine motherhood and employment.

They show a population living through years of high inflation.

They show government concern about aging, population distribution and national strength.

But I have not found evidence demonstrating that LGBTQIA+ people created these problems.

Nor have I found evidence demonstrating that reducing the freedom, visibility or security of LGBTQIA+ people will solve them.

That is why I regard the targeting of LGBTQIA+ people within this demographic conversation as scapegoating unless and until a causal case can actually be demonstrated.

This is my interpretation of the evidence, not a judicial finding.

And it leads to a simple challenge.

If a government is going to burden the rights and lives of a minority in the name of protecting the future of the nation, it should be able to demonstrate how that minority created the problem it claims to be solving.

Family Values or Population Management?

Perhaps the most revealing discovery in this research came from looking at China.

Governments have not always wanted more babies.

Sometimes they wanted fewer.

China once mobilized enormous state power to suppress fertility.

Now it mobilizes state power to increase it.

The desired reproductive behavior changed because the demographic circumstances changed.

That history makes me question whether the enduring principle is really “family values.”

The more enduring principle may be:

The state wants the population to behave reproductively in ways that serve the state's current demographic objectives.

When births appear too numerous, government can discourage them.

When births appear too few, government can encourage them.

When population aging threatens economic structures, children become a national priority.

When national rivalry intensifies, population becomes a component of future economic and strategic power.

None of this means governments should ignore demographic change.

A country has every right to study aging, fertility, migration and the sustainability of its workforce.

The moral issue arises when demographic management begins diminishing the liberty, dignity or security of people who do not conform to the government's preferred model of family or gender.

What Would a Different Family Policy Ask?

What if the central question were not:

How do we make people reproduce?

What if it were:

How do we create a society in which people who want children can actually afford to have them?

That would shift attention toward housing.

Toward wages.

Toward food costs.

Toward affordable childcare.

Toward maternal employment.

Toward parental leave.

Toward education.

Toward children's healthcare.

Toward preventing abuse.

Toward reducing child poverty.

Toward stronger relationships and community.

Toward economic stability.

Toward people's confidence that their children will inherit a future worth entering.

It would also make room for many forms of family.

A heterosexual married couple with children is a family.

A single mother is a family.

A widowed father and his children are a family.

Grandparents raising grandchildren are a family.

An adoptive family is a family.

A foster family is a family.

An LGBTQ couple raising children is a family.

A transgender parent and child are a family.

People do not need to become identical in order for a nation to value families.

The Question of Religion

Religion deserves careful treatment too.

Traditional Sunni Islamic jurisprudence generally regards same-sex sexual conduct as prohibited, just as historic Christian traditions frequently condemned same-sex sexual behavior.

But Türkiye is constitutionally a secular republic.

And religious belief is not uniform even within Islam.

The government's current demographic policy therefore cannot be reduced simply to “Islamic law.”

It involves religion, nationalism, social conservatism, demographic anxiety, economics, party politics and state policy.

Religious freedom must also operate in more than one direction.

Muslims have religious freedom.

Christians have religious freedom.

Jews have religious freedom.

People of other faiths have religious freedom.

People with no religion have freedom of conscience.

And LGBTQIA+ people can themselves belong to religions.

An LGBTQ person does not cease having religious rights because another religious tradition condemns their sexuality or gender identity.

That principle will become especially important in the open letter that follows this study.

What I Cannot Prove — and What I Can

I cannot prove that every leader involved in these policies acts from hatred.

I cannot prove that every pronatalist program is secretly intended to create soldiers.

I cannot prove that Ailem Güvende will ultimately reduce Türkiye's fertility rate.

I cannot prove that Türkiye's family program will fail; a ten-year program that began in 2026 has not existed long enough to measure its final results.

I cannot prove that every government using the phrase “family values” belongs to one coordinated international movement.

And I cannot make a legal finding that today's anti-LGBTQ policies constitute genocide under the 1948 Convention.

But the evidence does establish several things.

Türkiye has a serious fertility decline.

Türkiye also has severe affordability pressures.

Turkish people report wanting more children on average than they actually have.

A large proportion of Türkiye's existing children are economically or socially vulnerable.

The government's family and population strategy explicitly seeks to increase fertility and influence family formation.

Ailem Güvende is explicitly linked by the Justice Ministry to that broader family and population vision.

LGBTQ organizations and individuals have been swept into the resulting enforcement campaign.

Russia explicitly associates “nontraditional sexual relations” with threats to family and demographic stability.

Georgia has written “family values” and restrictions affecting LGBTQ people into the same statute.

China demonstrates how governments can reverse reproductive policy when demographic objectives change.

The United States currently uses some of the same “gender ideology” and “biological sex” vocabulary while operating within a significantly different legal system.

And history provides documented examples — most dramatically Nazi Germany — of a government portraying homosexual men as a threat to reproduction and national strength.

Those facts deserve attention.

The Central Question

Ultimately, this investigation has left me with one question that Türkiye's government — and every government pursuing similar policies — should be prepared to answer:

Where is the evidence that LGBTQIA+ people caused your fertility crisis?

And then another:

Where is the evidence that restricting LGBTQIA+ people will cause everyone else to have more children?

If the evidence does not exist, then LGBTQIA+ people should not be made responsible for problems they did not create.

A falling birth rate deserves serious policy.

An aging population deserves serious policy.

Families struggling economically deserve serious policy.

Children living in poverty deserve serious policy.

Women trying to combine employment and motherhood deserve serious policy.

Young people unable to afford homes deserve serious policy.

None of those problems is solved simply by identifying a minority and calling it a threat to the family.

What Does “My Family Is Safe” Really Mean?

The name Ailem Güvende — “My Family Is Safe” — may ultimately contain the most important question of all.

Whose family?

Safe from what?

Is a family endangered because a gay person exists?

Is a child endangered merely by learning that a transgender person exists?

Is a marriage weakened because another couple lives differently?

Or are families more immediately endangered when parents cannot afford housing, when wages fail to meet living costs, when childcare is unavailable, when children experience poverty, when abuse goes unaddressed, and when people lose confidence in their economic future?

Those are questions worth asking precisely because families matter.

If the purpose is truly the protection of families, then every family-policy intervention should be measured against actual family well-being.

A Humanitarian Question, Not Merely a Political One

This research began with Türkiye.

It ended somewhere much larger.

Around the world, LGBTQIA+ people continue living under extraordinary differences in law.

Some marry.

Some serve openly in government.

Some raise children.

Some enjoy constitutional protections.

Others cannot legally have consensual relationships.

Others cannot organize.

Others cannot speak publicly about who they are.

And in some jurisdictions consensual same-sex sexual activity can still expose people to the death penalty.

That is not an abstract political debate to the people living under those laws.

It is their life.

Their family.

Their faith.

Their employment.

Their freedom.

Their body.

Their safety.

And sometimes their survival.

The lesson I take from history is not that every contemporary restriction inevitably becomes an atrocity.

History does not move mechanically.

The lesson is that societies should pay attention before dehumanization becomes normalized.

Before an entire population becomes described primarily as a threat.

Before difference becomes criminal suspicion.

Before morality becomes justification for denying humanity.

Before government power becomes the instrument for making an unpopular minority disappear from public life.

The Open Letter That Follows

This investigation now leads to an open letter.

That letter will be addressed first to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose government established the 2026–2035 Family and Population Decade.

It will address Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, who publicly announced Ailem Güvende.

It will address Family and Social Services Minister Mahinur Özdemir Göktaş, whose ministry coordinates the broader family and population strategy.

It will address appropriate senior national leadership involved in that strategy, including Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz.

And it will address the institutions directly documented as participating in Ailem Güvende: the Chief Public Prosecutors' Offices of Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Aydın and Mersin; the Turkish National Police; and the Turkish Gendarmerie.

Where senior AK Party leaders are addressed because of their own public statements concerning LGBTQ people and family policy, the letter will identify their words and positions individually rather than accusing them of operational involvement that has not been established.

The letter will not ask Türkiye to ignore its demographic challenges.

It will ask something more fundamental:

Protect families without creating an enemy out of people who are themselves part of families.

It will ask for evidence.

It will ask for proportionality.

It will ask why documented economic barriers to family formation should not command at least the same urgency as attempts to control LGBTQ visibility.

It will ask whether a government can strengthen one family by diminishing another.

And it will ask Türkiye's leaders to consider what history teaches us about what can happen when a minority population becomes the symbolic explanation for problems far larger than that population could possibly have created.

Because LGBTQIA+ people are not a fertility rate.

We are not an economic statistic.

We are not a demographic threat.

We are human beings.

And before the world allows another generation of people to be categorized as a problem to be controlled, hidden, punished or erased, we should ask the question that began this entire investigation:

What is really going on here?

Rev. Paula Josephine Sadler

Universal Rainbow Faith Church

Dear God Save us from Ourselves.

“Please Do Not Erase Us: An Open Letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Leaders of the World.”

TO:

His Excellency Recep Tayyip ErdoğanPresident of the Republic of TürkiyeChairman of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party)President associated with the 2026–2035 Decade of Family and Population policy framework

Cevdet YılmazVice President of the Republic of TürkiyeSenior government official involved in the administration's broader family, population and national policy agenda

Akın GürlekMinister of Justice of the Republic of TürkiyeJustice Minister who publicly announced and described the Ailem Güvende — “My Family Is Safe” enforcement operation

Mahinur Özdemir GöktaşMinister of Family and Social Services of the Republic of TürkiyeMinister responsible for major components of Türkiye's family, population, birth-support and social-services policies

Belgin UygurAK Party Deputy Chair for Civil Society and Public RelationsMember of the AK Party Central Executive Committee

Özlem ZenginAK Party Parliamentary Group Deputy ChairMember of the AK Party Central Executive Committee

Dr. Leyla Şahin UstaAK Party Parliamentary Group Deputy ChairMember of Parliament for AnkaraMember of the AK Party Central Executive Committee

Fatma Betül Sayan KayaAK Party Deputy Chair for Social PoliciesMember of the AK Party Central Executive Committee

Tuğba Işık ErcanChairwoman of the AK Party Women's BranchesMember of the AK Party Central Executive Committee

Nilhan AyanAK Party Vice President for Environment and Urbanization PoliciesMember of the AK Party Central Executive Committee

To the Chief Public Prosecutors and Offices of:

Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's OfficeAnkara Chief Public Prosecutor's Officeİzmir Chief Public Prosecutor's OfficeAydın Chief Public Prosecutor's OfficeMersin Chief Public Prosecutor's Office

These prosecutorial offices have been identified by the Turkish government in connection with investigations conducted under the Ailem Güvende operation.

To the Turkish National Police — Emniyet Genel MüdürlüğüLaw-enforcement institution involved in the implementation of the operations.

To the Turkish Gendarmerie — Jandarma Genel KomutanlığıLaw-enforcement institution involved in the implementation of the operations.

And to all Turkish government officials, lawmakers, political leaders, religious leaders and public institutions whose decisions, policies or public statements affect the freedom, safety, dignity and human rights of LGBTQIA+ people in Türkiye.

9-21-2026

Dear God, please reveal the truth and help me to reach the heart of President Erdogan, and to the government of Turkey, and to leaders worldwide who embrace the movement to eliminate LGBTQIA+ lives from society. Dear Allah please give me the words and help your followers to see the truth of this moment. Thank You, and so it is. Amen, Ameen

Dear President, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, To all World Leaders & Et Al

I am writing to you from the heart of Humanity, from the Heart of God, of the Creator of Humankind. It is with great sadness that I must write to you for what I have seen in your government recently and around the world towards LGBTQIA+ people.

The Crisis you believe you face and others Globally and concerns of family values, birth rates, & national security are not caused by LGBTQ people. I am Transgendered, I am a Transgender Woman, I am a part of the group you are now persecuting and blaming for the fall of what you claim to be traditional family values, or morality or low birth rates.

More than being Transgendered, I am Human, I am Spiritual, and I am a beloved Child of God and Allah. I child of The Universe and I belong to all faiths, all religions and none at all. If I were to stand before you and many others in the world, would you Love me as I am? Or would you torture, imprison and kill me? To make laws against LGBTQIA+ people to criminalize their existence is the same thing as Killing them, imposing unimaginable pain, grief suffering and harm, it is a form of spiritual, physical, mental and emotional violence, God is watching, Allah is watching, Buddha is Watching, Bog (Бог) of Russia is watching, Brahman is watching, The God of the Atheist of China is Watching, Jesus of Nazareth is Watching, God by any and all names is watching.

As I stand before you and other nations, you would rather see me tortured, stoned, hanged, beaten, humiliated, denied freedom, starved, drowned, burned alive, otherwise eradicated from this earth. But yet God made me, God created me and gave me life, yet humans who claim to believe in this Loving God who created me as I am- would try to deny the right to exist. Please do not Kill Me. You are Killing me, and Killing others like me, suppression, repression, are all forms of eradication. It is death by erasure, & silence.

I am your child; I am the child of all those who hate LBTQIA+ people. God is watching, God weeps for humanity.

Dear Allah, Dear God what is your message for these leaders and government who claim follow you, and believe in you, and claim you as their God?

“In prayer, these are the words that came through me”

My Dear Followers It is I Allah, God, and The God of all names to all people and to Atheist and Agnostics, it is I the Allah of Turkey to Sunni Islam, to Russia, China, The United States, to Muslims everywhere, to the Middle East, to everywhere in the world that has caused suffering and harm to LGBTQIA+ people, I have been watching you and I am sad that you would kill your brothers and sisters whom I have given to be your companions in this world.

I have been watching you and trying to guide you to Love as I Love. Unconditionally. It is very simple you must stop harming and killing. You are the cause of great disharmony in the world, because your hearts are full of hatred, lust for power, and wealth, you desire to control your brothers and sisters. It is not my way, your fear is your God, you are full of fear and lead with fear, when you should lead with love.

Your actions are not an example of my love and teaching. I have sent many before you to show you the way and you have persecuted them; you have killed them. As you are still doing today. “I sent prophets and messengers among you—including Jesus, whom Muslims know as ʿĪsā—to call humanity toward God” For others I sent Jesus known to them as my Son and the world persecuted him.

Today I still send you Messengers and still today you deny them, you persecute them, you KILL them.

That is not of me, do not proclaim you follow me or love me and yet have hatred in your hearts and kill your brothers and sisters. You must pray for forgiveness and to release and let go of your fears.

I do not wish to weep for you any longer, know that I am watching over and protecting all my children. I love all my creations. I have made the ones you so despise, they are my special creations, and I will be with them, and for any suffering at your hands they have endured they will be greatly rewarded when they are reunited with me.

I love you, I bless you, and I ask that you embrace all my children with open arms and Love.

Thank You, God, Thank You Allah, thank you to the God of All Creation for using me as a channel, although they will not believe, I know that making the attempt and the demonstration of your love is what’s most important.

I thank you, and I know we will be reunited in Heaven, until that time, help me to help your children. And so it is, Amen

Sincerely, Your Messenger of the Least of these…

Rev. Paula Josephine Sadler

Universal Rainbow Faith Church

p.s, I have written an article that will illustrate the problem your country faces and others and a solution that does not include harming others.

A Prayer for LGBTQIA+ and Transgender People Facing Persecution Around the World

Dear God,Dear Allah,Dear Creator of All Life,Divine Love known by many names and beyond every name,

Today we pray for our LGBTQIA+ and transgender brothers, sisters, siblings, children, parents, families, friends, and loved ones throughout the world.

We pray especially for those in Türkiye, Russia, China, throughout the Middle East, the United States, and in every nation where LGBTQIA+ people are criminalized, persecuted, silenced, imprisoned, threatened, beaten, tortured, rejected, erased, or killed simply for being who they are.

We pray for those who are afraid to speak their own names.

For those who hide who they are in order to survive.

For those who cannot tell their families.

For those whose families have rejected them.

For those who are afraid of their government.

For those who fear the police.

For those who fear religious authorities.

For those who fear their neighbors.

For those who fear losing their homes, their jobs, their families, their freedom, or their lives.

God, let them know:

You are not alone.

You are not forgotten.

You are not a mistake.

You are not immoral because of who you are.

You are not less worthy because another person does not understand you.

You are not less sacred because a government writes a law against you.

You are not less holy because someone condemns you.

You are not erased simply because someone tries to erase you.

You are here.

You are alive.

You are part of humanity.

You belong to this Earth.

And you are loved.

Dear God, wrap Your arms around every LGBTQIA+ person who is frightened tonight.

Sit beside those who are crying.

Stand beside those who are being judged.

Walk beside those who are fleeing persecution.

Give shelter to those who have been turned away.

Give food to those who have been abandoned.

Give safety to those who are being hunted.

Give hope to those who believe there is no tomorrow.

Give courage to those who must stand before governments, courts, families, churches, mosques, temples, schools, employers, and communities and say:

This is who I am.

Give strength to every transgender person whose very existence has become the subject of political debate.

Remind them that they are more than legislation.

More than a headline.

More than an argument.