During Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s high-profile visit to the United States to address the United Nations General Assembly, LGBTQ+ rights activists have launched a high-visibility rebuke of his administration’s sweeping crackdown on queer communities and their allies, taking over digital billboards in one of the world’s most iconic public spaces. The action, organized by the Turkish advocacy group March 19 Platform, fills the New York Times Square billboards with a defiant message: “we’ll always be here”, paired with a portrait of Zeki Muren, a cultural figure beloved across Turkey since the 1950s who remains an enduring queer icon for his flamboyant persona and gender-nonconforming style, despite never publicly confirming his sexuality. In an official statement outlining the action, the group explained that Muren’s image, framed by rainbow colors, serves as a deliberate act of public visibility at a moment when LGBTQ+ people and human rights defenders in Turkey face escalating state repression. The March 19 Platform takes its name from the date of the 2025 arrest of prominent opposition Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, linking the crackdown on queer communities to a broader pattern of political repression under Erdogan’s government. The provocative public protest comes in the wake of a sweeping nationwide wave of detentions, raids and legal actions targeting LGBTQ+ groups, their staff, supporters and ordinary queer citizens across Turkey. In recent weeks alone, Turkish law enforcement has raided hundreds of individuals and civil society organizations, imposed blocks on hundreds of social media accounts and independent websites, and secured formal arrest warrants for more than 80 people who remain in pre-trial detention. Those detained have been hit with a slate of controversial charges, ranging from “obscenity” and “assisting prostitution” to alleged “financial links to foreign groups”, framing the crackdown as part of the government’s stated mission to protect traditional Turkish family values. During his address to the UN General Assembly on September 24, Erdogan amplified this narrative, listing “global gender-neutralisation policies” alongside major global threats including Islamophobia, unregulated artificial intelligence and global food insecurity. He characterized these policies as a deliberate “siege” targeting children and the foundational institution of the family, telling the assembly: “We can break the siege only by protecting the family consisting of women and men. Turkey will continue to take initiatives in protecting families and children, in spite of attacks from certain lobby groups.” While same-sex relations have never been criminalized in Turkey, and social attitudes toward sexual orientation and gender identity vary widely across the country, Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has steadily ramped up rhetorical and legal targeting of the LGBTQ+ community over the past decade. Earlier this year, Erdogan officially designated the period starting in 2026 as the national “Decade of the Family”, framing the initiative as a defense of traditional social structures. The ongoing nationwide crackdown has even been branded the “My Family is Safe” operation by Turkish authorities. In a move that has drawn criticism from international human rights groups, social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has complied with requests from Turkish authorities to block the accounts of dozens of prominent civil society and media organizations. Among the blocked accounts are Amnesty International Turkey, left-wing independent outlet Evrensel, the peace advocacy group Academics for Peace, the Media and Law Studies Association, CETAD (the Sexual Education, Treatment and Research Association, which provides life-saving support to people living with HIV), and the Psychiatric Association of Turkey. One of the highest-profile targets of the crackdown is Kaos GL, Turkey’s most prominent and long-standing LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. The Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that 21 people linked to the group have been arrested as part of an ongoing national investigation. In an interview with independent outlet Middle East Eye last week, Kaos GL editor-in-chief Yildiz Tar said the scale of the current repression is unprecedented in his experience of activism. Tar explained that roughly half of those arrested are professional journalists and LGBTQ+ rights campaigners, while the other half are ordinary citizens taken during raids on queer-owned bars, community cafes and private homes. “This is a new level of oppression toward LGBTQ activism and existence – and the government is trying to get people to say LGBTQ people are trying to destroy the family,” Tar said. He added that the government’s narrative deliberately distracts from the actual threats facing Turkish families: “The real threat to the family is poverty, lack of social policies, the threat is femicide, and they are trying to cover that lack of policies by demonising LGBTQ people.”