23/10/2025 | Writer: Kaos GL
CHP Chairman Özgür Özel has strongly condemned the government's proposed 11th Judicial Package, which seeks to imprison LGBTI+ individuals for "promoting" their identity and drastically restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare.
The leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Özgür Özel, has strongly condemned the proposed 11th Judicial Package, labeling its measures against the LGBTI+ community as "absurd" and a product of a "diseased perspective."
The controversial draft bill, expected to be submitted to Parliament soon, includes significant new measures targeting LGBTI+ individuals. The proposal aims to amend Article 225 of the Turkish Penal Code, introducing prison sentences of one to three years for those who "engage in or publicly encourage, praise, or promote attitudes and behaviors contrary to the innate biological sex and general morality."
Furthermore, the package seeks to raise the minimum age for gender reassignment surgery from 18 to 25 and impose stricter conditions, including requiring a medical board report issued after four separate evaluations conducted at intervals of at least three months.
Speaking on a Halk TV live broadcast, CHP Chairman Özgür Özel reacted fiercely to the draft.
"First of all, the issue of gender-affirming surgeries... this is not a decision for politicians to make. This is a decision for medical professionals. It's a decision for the individual," Özel stated.
"If a person's request and various medical justifications require this surgery to be done at 20, how can it be that the AK Party says one thing while medicine says another until age 25? This is the most absurd thing in the world, to begin with."
Regarding the proposed prison sentences for "promotion," Özel was blunt:
"Besides that, a prison sentence. Who and what are you bringing prison sentences for? What, what are you bringing a prison sentence for? Based on what? Do you know how absurd this is? What do you know that you are punishing? According to whom?"
Özel compared the proposed measures to past discrimination, such as the ban on headscarved students in universities.
"In the past, they used to do this. For example, they wouldn't allow headscarved students into universities. It was, above all, discrimination against women... A female student covers her head due to her faith. You can't enter, but you can. If you talk about your sexual orientation, you go to prison; if you don't, in the background, in secret... What's it to you? What's it to you? It's that simple. This is the answer to the one who says 'I will give a prison sentence': What's it to you?"
Özel distinguished between personal identity and criminal acts, stating, "Disturbing public order... that is regulated elsewhere. Anyone who disturbs public order... should be punished. But if you try to punish a person for their own preference and see this as a threat to public order, then you are looking at the issue from a diseased perspective."
He concluded by accusing the government of political opportunism.
"I am very clear on these issues... Here, too, an exhausted government is trying to scrape together political gain by constantly poking at a sensitive issue that Turkish society generally views with apprehension. They should try another door."
Tags: human rights
