Turkish President Gay-Baits Rivals, Labeling Them “Pro-LGBT”

metroweekly.com:

proposed a constitutional amendment to deny legal recognition of LGBTQ rights to counter a popular constitutional amendment brought by the left-wing secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), which sought to enshrine a woman’s right to wear a religious headscarf into the constitution.

By introducing an amendment that attacks the LGBTQ community, Erdoğan hoped to not only cement support among social conservatives, especially radical Islamists who have long backed his party but to force CHP and other opposition parties to either come out in favor of his proposed amendment or reveal their pro-LGBTQ sympathies and risk losing the votes of devout Muslims.As public polls indicate that AKP has lost the level of support it once enjoyed before the global COVID-19 pandemic, especially with respect to inflation, rising prices, higher costs of living, and other economic issues, Erdoğan has increasingly found his party on the defensive, lashing out at rivals and desperately trying to paint them as opponents of “family values.”Speaking at Sunday’s rally in Istanbul, Erdoğan, who has held a lock on power for nearly two decades — serving as prime minister from 2003 to 2014 and as president since 2014 — vowed never to advance pro-LGBT policies, according to Reuters.“AK Party and other parties in our alliance would never be pro-LGBT, because family is sacred to us.

We will bury those pro-LGBT in the ballot box,” he said.He also attacked his chief rival, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the head of the CHP opposition party, as catering to “deviants.”Kılıçdaroğlu is the unity candidate of the six-party Nation Alliance, a group of opposition parties seeking to consolidate votes in order to effectively challenge not only Erdoğan’s lock on power but the.