Turkish police detained at least 30 people in central Istanbul on Sunday as they tried to take part in a Pride March, which authorities had banned as part of a years-long clampdown on LGBTQ+ events, an opposition politician said.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed police scuffling with a group of activists holding rainbow flags in the city center before rounding them up and loading them into police vans.

Kezban Konukcu, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party who attended the march, told Reuters that at least 30 people had been taken into custody.

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Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Istanbul governor’s office had earlier deemed the march unlawful and said groups promoting the event were operating “illegally.”

Authorities have banned Pride marches in Turkey’s largest city since 2015, citing public safety and security concerns.

President Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party has adopted increasingly harsh rhetoric against the LGBTQ+ community over the past decade.

In January, Erdogan declared 2025 the “Year of the Family,” describing Turkey’s declining birth rate as an existential threat and accusing the LGBTQ+ movement of undermining traditional values.

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“The primary goal of the gender neutralization policies, in which LGBT is used as a battering ram, is the family and the sanctity of the family institution,” Erdogan said in January.

Rights groups have condemned Turkey’s stance. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have warned that government rhetoric and actions are fueling a hostile environment for LGBTQ+ people, contributing to rising discrimination and violence.

Despite the bans, small groups of activists continue to mark Pride Week each year. Organizers say the increasingly aggressive police response reflects broader crackdowns on dissent and freedom of assembly in Turkey.

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Police arrested more than 50 people in Istanbul on Sunday ahead of a banned LGBTQ+ Pride march, the city’s bar association said.

“Before today’s Istanbul Pride march, four of our colleagues, including members of our Human Rights Centre, along with more than 50 people, were deprived of their liberty through arbitrary, unjust, and illegal detention,” the Istanbul Bar’s Human Rights Centre posted on X.

Earlier on Sunday, police arrested protesters near the central Ortaköy district, AFP journalists observed on the scene.

Once a lively affair with thousands of marchers, Istanbul Pride has been banned each year since 2015 by Turkey’s ruling conservative government.

“These calls, which undermine social peace, family structure, and moral values, are prohibited,” Istanbul’s governor, Davut Gül, had warned on X on Saturday.

“No gathering or march that threatens public order will be tolerated,” he added.

Taksim Square, one of the city’s main venues for protests, celebrations and rallies, was blocked off by police from early on Sunday.

One protester chanted, “We didn’t give up, we came, we believed, we are here,” as she and a dozen others ran to avoid arrest, according to a video posted on X.

Homosexuality is not criminalised in Turkey, but homophobia is widespread. It reaches even the highest levels of government, with the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, regularly describing LGBTQ+ people as “perverts” and a threat to the traditional family.

The banning of Istanbul pride follows the failure of Hungary’s conservative leader, Viktor Orbán, to prevent his country’s main pride parade from going ahead.

An estimated 200,000 people, a record, marched in the Budapest Pride parade Saturday, defying a ban by Orbán’s government.

Turkish police arrested several people in Istanbul. Keystone

Following the ban on the Pride parade in Istanbul, Turkish police arrested more than 50 people on Sunday. This was announced by the Human Rights Center of the Istanbul Bar Association.

Keystone-SDA SDA

The Human Rights Center stated that the police had “deprived four members of the Bar Association named as observers and more than 50 people of their freedom through arbitrary, unjust and illegal detention”.

Earlier, the police had already arrested protesters near the Ortaköy district, as AFP journalists observed on site.

After a sensational Pride parade in Istanbul in 2014 with more than 100,000 participants, the Turkish authorities have always banned the event in recent years, including this year.

Istanbul Governor Davut Gül declared on Saturday that events that “undermine social peace, family structure and moral values” were banned. “No gathering or demonstration that threatens public order will be tolerated,” he warned in the online service X.

Central square cordoned off

In order to enforce the ban, the police cordoned off Taksim Square, which was the central location of the mass protests against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2013, from early Sunday morning. As videos posted on online networks showed, the police also broke up a small protest in which a woman chanted: “We didn’t give up, we came, we believed we were here.” She then ran away from the police together with a dozen companions.

Homosexuality is not a punishable offense in Turkey, but homophobia is widespread. President Erdogan also repeatedly rails against people from the LGBTQ community and insults them as “perverts”. The abbreviation LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.

Turkish police officers walk as people gather and celebrate the annual Pride March in Istanbul. (AP pic)

ANKARA : Police arrested more than 50 people in Istanbul Sunday ahead of a banned LGBTQ+ pride march, the city’s bar association said.

“Before today’s Istanbul Pride march, four of our colleagues, including members of our Human Rights Centre, along with more than 50 people, were deprived of their liberty through arbitrary, unjust, and illegal detention,” the Istanbul Bar’s Human Rights Centre posted on X.

Earlier Sunday, police arrested protesters near the central Ortakoy district, AFP journalists observed on the scene.

Once a lively affair with thousands of marchers, Istanbul Pride has been banned each year since 2015 by Turkey’s ruling conservative government.

“These calls, which undermine social peace, family structure, and moral values, are prohibited,” Istanbul Governor Davut Gul warned on X on Saturday.

“No gathering or march that threatens public order will be tolerated,” he added.

Taksim Square, one of the city’s main venues for protests, celebrations and rallies, was blocked off by police from early Sunday.

According to a video posted on X by Queer Feminist Scholars, one protester chanted “We didn’t give up, we came, we believed, we are here,” as she and a dozen others ran to avoid arrest.

Homosexuality is not criminalised in Turkey, but homophobia is widespread. It reaches even the highest levels of government, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regularly describing LGBTQ+ people as “perverts” and a threat to the traditional family.

The banning of Istanbul pride follows the failure of Hungary’s conservative leader Viktor Orban to prevent his country’s main pride parade from going ahead.

An estimated 200,000 people, a record, marched in the Budapest Pride parade Saturday, defying a ban by Orban’s government.

The UK’s largest Pride organisers have suspended political party participation in their events in “unequivocal solidarity” with the transgender community.

In a joint statement, the organisers of Pride events in Birmingham, Brighton, London and Manchester said the move was a “direct call for accountability and a refusal to platform those who have not protected our rights” after the UK supreme court ruling last month.

The highest court in the UK ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer only to a biological woman and to biological sex. Five judges ruled unanimously that the legal definition of a woman in the act did not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates.

The UK government said the ruling brought “clarity and confidence” for women and those who run hospitals, sports clubs and women’s refuges.

The Pride organisers said: “As the organisers of the UK’s largest Pride events in Birmingham, Brighton, London and Manchester, we come together today in unequivocal solidarity with our trans community.

“We are united not only in message, but in purpose. At a time when trans rights in the UK are under growing attack, our resolve has never been stronger: we will not allow progress to be undone.

“We will not stand by as the dignity, safety and humanity of our trans siblings are debated, delayed or denied.”

The organisers called on the UK to be a “global leader in human rights and equality”, adding: “We need every political party to stand unequivocally with every member of the LGBTQ+ community, and to centre the voices of trans people in policy, practice and public life.”

The organisers want protections for trans people under the Equality Act, access to NHS gender-affirming healthcare, a reformed gender recognition certificate process and funding for trans-led services and support organisations across the UK.

Fourteen national LGBTQ+ charities wrote to Keir Starmer seeking an urgent meeting to discuss what they describe as “a genuine crisis for the rights, dignity and inclusion of trans people in the UK” after the supreme court’s ruling.

Gender-critical campaigners said the ruling was a “huge reset” that left them feeling “vindicated and relieved”. Susan Smith, a co-director of the campaign group For Women Scotland, which brought the case to the supreme court, said: “Gender reassignment is a protected characteristic, and it is still protected. But saying that women were just some amorphous collection of people and it was an identity anyone could have, it was really downplaying the very real and different issues that affect men and women.”

Maya Forstater, who founded the campaign group Sex Matters after she won an employment tribunal that found she had been unfairly discriminated against because of her gender-critical beliefs, said the ruling brought “relief, vindication, happiness and pride”.

She said the court judgment was about “recognising rules and reality”. “If you’re a man, you can call yourself what you like, you can dress how you like, but you cannot work in a rape crisis centre, you cannot go into a woman’s changing room,” she said.