Turkish Family and Social Services Minister Derya Yanik said homosexuality cannot be “normalized.”
“Our government has values. We do not have the luxury of normalizing homosexuality,” Yanik told Hürriyet columnist Hande Firat on Friday.
Homosexuality has never been criminalised under modern Turkey, but country’s Islamist government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan banned several LGBTQIA+ events since mid-2010s. Erdogan last year pulled Turkey out of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, after pro-government conservative and Islamist groups argued that it undermined Turkish family values and promoted homosexuality.
In July, the United Nations urged Turkey to reverse the decision of ditching the accord, saying that the implementation of domestic legislation protecting women from abuse “had been weakened” after the withdrawal.
However, Family and Social Services Minister Yanik told Firat that there is no possibility of reversal.
Source:gerceknews