COP31 Is Happening in Turkey While LGBTQ+ Activists Sit in Jail — and Delegates Were Told to Stay Quiet

COP31 opened in Antalya on November 9, with nearly 200 countries and more than 90,000 people expected through November 20. Two months before the flags went up, Turkish police carried out a nationwide operation against LGBTI groups that Amnesty International says led to at least 116 arrests across 15 provinces.

The summit's host is Turkey's environment minister, Murat Kurum; the negotiations are chaired by Australia's Chris Bowen. The question hanging over the venue is whether delegates will say anything about the crackdown happening in the country hosting them — and the paperwork they signed quietly discourages it.

The raids behind the summit

Police hit gay bars, NGO offices and activists' homes in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Mersin from September 13, according to Al Jazeera. Justice Minister Akin Gurlek branded the sweep "My Family is Safe" and framed it as child protection, saying prosecutors were investigating 162 suspects, nine associations and 13 businesses. In Ankara, authorities accused the rights group Kaos GL of publishing obscene material children could reach online.

Within days, courts had jailed at least 62 people pending trial, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported — detentions, not convictions. By September 22, Amnesty counted at least 83 people in pretrial detention and more than 160 under criminal investigation, with hundreds of social media accounts blocked or restricted.

ILGA-Europe and partner organisations called it in a joint statement on September 14: "The scale, timing and selection of targets indicate a coordinated attack on organised LGBTI+ civil society in Türkiye."

A draft law still waiting

A criminal bill has shadowed LGBTQ Turks for a year. A leaked draft of the government's 11th Judicial Package, reported by Human Rights Watch in October 2025, would have punished conduct "contrary to biological sex and general morality". Those provisions were dropped before parliament voted — but in February a pro-government daily reported that the Justice Ministry would bring them back as a standalone bill.

Under that version, anyone who "publicly encourages, praises or promotes" such conduct could face one to three years in prison, and the minimum age for legal gender change would rise from 18 to 25. As of November 9, no report showed the bill had passed. Istanbul Pride has been banned since 2015; at this year's march in Kadıköy in June, police detained at least 65 people, journalists among them, according to bianet.

"There can be no climate justice without the freedom to demand it." — Marta Schaaf, climate programme director at Amnesty International

The fine print delegates signed

Turkey's hosting agreement with the UN states that participants with privileges and immunities "have the duty to respect the laws and regulations in force in the Republic of Türkiye and have the duty not to interfere in its internal affairs", as Climate Home News reported. COP28 and COP29 carried similar language; it was dropped for COP30 in Brazil. Amnesty's Ann Harrison called its return "extremely disappointing" and warned of a "wider chilling effect" on expression and assembly.

A separate Green Zone pledge for speakers asks them to respect "public morality" and does not list sexual orientation or gender identity among its protections, according to Turkish Minute. Kurum said in September his team would try to meet civil society requests and offer "a free space to express themselves". The agreement's text does not mention LGBTQ people at all.

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Sources: Gayety, "Turkey's LGBTQ Crackdown Shadows the COP31 Climate Summit in Antalya" (10 November 2026); The Advocate, "Op-ed: Türkiye's LGBTQ+ crackdown casts a shadow over UN climate summit's promise to leave no one behind" (9 November 2026); figures as reported by Amnesty International, Al Jazeera, ILGA-Europe, Human Rights Watch, Climate Home News, bianet and Turkish Minute.