Results of Turkey’s 2023 general election were released, with Recep Tayyip Erdogan being re-elected as president, beating out social democrat Kemal Kiliçdaroglu[…]
Speaking to supporters in front of his Istanbul residence after the result, Erdogan thanked voters for putting their trust in him. He went on to speak out once more against the LGBTQ+ community, saying: “In our culture, family is sacred, no one can interfere. We will strangle anyone who dares to touch it”

He continued by suggesting that the so-called “LGBT forces” would not be able to infiltrate his party, the AKP. These sentiments align with his longstanding and openly homophobic beliefs that queer identities are inseparably linked with “terror, immorality, perversion and violence” and follow rhetoric he used in his recent re-election campaign

At a rally in Izmir earlier this year, for example, he said: “In this nation, the foundations of the family are stable. LGBT will not emerge in this country”

At another electoral rally, he affirmed that his party will “never be pro-LGBT, because the family is sacred to us”, a statement similar to the one he made after being re-elected on Sunday

Throughout his whole campaign, Erdogan put a heavy emphasis on striking down the LGBTQ+ community, seeking support from his Islamist base to win the election. Many of his speeches accused the opposition of undermining family values and being infiltrated by powerful LGBTQ+ networks, sometimes even hinting that they were being run by paymasters abroad, framing the queerness as “cultural terrorism” of the West

Furthermore, he called on people to vote for him in order to “take a stand against those who exhibit any kind of perversion forbidden by God, who exhibit any kind of heresy our lord has forbidden, and those who support them”