Whose Family Is Safe?

Whose Family Is Safe? The Anatomy of an Operation's Name and the Boundary of "We"

Dear Young Comrades,

Look closely at this name: My Family Is Safe.

Three words. A possessive, an adjective. There is no subject, no verb, no description of a threat. Whose family, safe from what, protected from whom — none of it is said. But everyone who reads it feels something: there was a danger, it was close to us, someone stepped in.

The name given to an operation is not a summary of its legal content; it is a summary of the public feeling that is desired. In last week's piece we looked at the list this operation produced: who was blocked, on what ground, in what order. In this piece we will look at the name that had the list written. We will have three questions:

Whose family?
Safe from what?
Who is not safe?

And under these three a fourth question will stand — the real question of this piece: when we say "we," whom do we mean?

1. Chronology: One Night, One Name, One Day

12 September 2026, 01.00. Simultaneous house and association raids in fifteen provinces. The forty-sixth anniversary of the 12 September coup. (Kaos GL statement)

12 September. Istanbul 7th Criminal Judgeship of Peace, 2026/9559: the sites and accounts of LGBTI+ associations. (Gazete Pencere)

13 September. Justice Minister Akın Gürlek gave the operation its name and its figures: 162 suspects, 9 associations, 13 businesses. Ground: Presidential Circular No. 2026/4 and the "Decade of Family and Population." (bianet)

13 September. Bakırköy 4th Criminal Judgeship of Peace, 2026/9112: Evrensel, Amnesty International Turkey, the Academics for Peace, MLSA, UMUT-SEN. (Serbestiyet)

14 September. Izmir: 18 detentions, 16 arrests. (Medyascope)

15 September. Fifteen people, including members of Kaos GL's board and audit board and the journalist Tuğba Tekerek, before the judgeship on a request for arrest. (Medyascope) The same day the matter was in Parliament by a written question. (Cumhuriyet)

One night. One name. A newspaper the next day.

The figures again do not hold: the number of provinces is 15 (the minister), "centred on 5 provinces" (A Haber), 12–15 (Medyascope); detentions 26 (AA), 21 (association boards), "nearly 50" (Kaos GL). I am not hiding this scatter either; I wrote last week why. The texts of the decisions are not published. No one knows for certain how many people, how many accounts, on what ground, were targeted. The state does not say either.

2. Who Are These People? — Read Their Work One by One

Let us look at what the people targeted by an operation named "My Family Is Safe" actually do. Not the adjective, the work.

Kaos GL (1994–). Turkey's oldest LGBTI+ organisation. For thirty-two years it has kept a record of rights violations; some of the series we used when reading the İHD report come from here. The name of the 2025 report it published on 24 February 2026: "Year of the Family: The Great Raid on LGBTI+ People." (MLSA)

Pozitif Yaşam, Pozitif İz. Counselling for people living with HIV, access to treatment, legal support against discrimination. This is exactly why the Turkish Medical Association objected to the operation: "…it is also the turning of access to health services, a fundamental human right, into a matter of crime." (joint statement of the TTB, TPD, TTB-UDEK)

SPoD, Lambdaistanbul, Pembe Hayat, HEVİ, 17 Mayıs, Muamma, 7 Renk. A counselling line, shelter referrals, legal support, mental-health support, work with families (LİSTAG: an association of LGBTI+ families — yes, family).

Among those detained: lawyers, a journalist, association bookkeepers, teachers, health workers, a dancer.

Now put this list side by side. What is the common feature?

Running a counselling line. Finding shelter. Referring a patient. Watching a case. Keeping a record. That is, doing as volunteers the work the state does not do.

That is exactly what they are charged with. Filling the gap the state left.

Note this as well: these people did not come "from outside." Teacher, health worker, call-centre worker, courier, lawyer. The same shift, the same service bus, the same rent. The sentence in the associations' joint statement says this:

"LGBTI+ people are not people who live outside families, added to society afterwards! We are those families' children, siblings, parents and kin."

(joint statement of LGBTI+ associations, 13 September 2026)

To take a family's child from their home at night in the name of that family's "safety." The first contradiction of the name is here.

3. What Is the Crime? — A Law That Did Not Pass Parliament

In November 2025 the LGBTI+ provisions were taken out of the 11th Judicial Package. In June 2026 they were taken out of the 12th Judicial Package again: a fifty-nine-article draft was submitted to Parliament as twenty-nine articles. What was removed: counting LGBTI+ visibility as "encouragement and praise," one and a half to four years for a same-sex wedding ceremony, raising the age of gender-affirming care to twenty-five.

So these acts are not a crime in the Turkish Penal Code. Parliament twice refused to make them a crime. The doors were broken in all the same.

Gökçe Gökçen's sentence: "The influence-agency law did not pass. The law on incitement to homosexuality did not pass. But now a law that does not exist is being applied." (Artı Gerçek)

The sentence of 114 women's organisations: "These operations are nothing other than the de facto application of efforts to turn the organising of LGBTI+ people into a crime under the Turkish Penal Code." (BirGün)

So what is the alleged crime? TPC 226 — obscenity. What is obscene? In the trial of the Genç LGBTİ+ Association that began in Izmir in April 2026, the subject of the charge is an image of two people kissing on social media. The sentence sought: up to three years in prison. The hearing is 14 October 2026. (Euronews)

If a photograph of two people kissing is obscene, every series in this country, every advertising hoarding, every wedding album is obscene. Those are not touched.

A thing that is not applied to everyone is not a rule. It is an instrument of selection.

Constitution art. 38, TPC art. 2: no one may be punished for an act the law does not expressly count as a crime. This is called the principle of legality. It is the gain of centuries. And know this, comrade: the history of the labour movement is the history of struggle against vague definitions of crime. "Disturbing public order," "inciting the people to hatred and hostility," "organisation propaganda." These are the articles that will be read to you in a strike tent. To whom the vague article is applied today is secondary; that it has been seen to be applicable is primary.

4. What Did the Minister Say? — Two Sentences, Two Violations

The Minister of Justice, with no indictment, while the investigation is ongoing: "associations that promote LGBT and immorality." And: no tolerance will be shown to any "criminal organisation."

Constitution art. 38/4: "No one shall be considered guilty until their guilt is established by a final judgment." This sentence binds the minister at the head of the judiciary as well. It binds him most of all.

İHD: "The Justice Minister's statements, which declare guilt in advance about ongoing investigations and produce hate speech, are unacceptable." (İHD, 13 September 2026)

The second sentence was about "foreign funds." A MASAK examination, "high amounts." Yet art. 21 of Associations Law No. 5253 expressly leaves receiving aid from abroad free, subject to notification. In the same days it was on the record that foundations close to the government had taken millions of euros from the EU. (Cumhuriyet)

What the law leaves free is being counted as a crime. According to whom? According to whoever did it.

Class reading: Almost every union in Turkey is a member of an international confederation. It pays dues, takes training support, draws on a solidarity fund. All of this is a "foreign connection." If this argument can be applied to an association today, tomorrow it can be applied to every union that is a member of the ITUC. The mechanism is ready; the target changes.

5. Whose Decision? — A List That Lengthened in a Day

I wrote this in detail last week; here I will only repeat the spine, because the thesis of this piece rests on it.

12 September: LGBTI+ organisations. 13 September: Evrensel newspaper. Amnesty International Turkey. The Academics for Peace. MLSA. UMUT-SEN.

What has a union to do with "morality," with "the family," with "obscenity"?

Nothing. And that is exactly the point.

Two grounds circulate under the same decision number: obscenity and national security. 5651 arts. 8 and 8/A. Two separate legal regimes, one number. And because the text of the decision is not published, no one officially knows which account was shut under which. If you do not know what you would appeal, your right of appeal remains on paper.

A mechanism built to silence one group is not used only to silence that group. It cannot be. The mechanism is designed not by the group but by the function.

Erkan Baş has put the political name on this: "They want to 'discipline' those whose path does not cross the Palace, with the courts, with the stick, with censorship." (ANKA)

6. Is "Family" a Legal Ground? — It Is Not

Turkey is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights; under Constitution art. 90 the Convention stands above domestic law. Art. 11 association, art. 10 expression.

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O'Flaherty, on 15 September:

"The European Court of Human Rights has made it clear that mere references to 'family values' or 'the protection of children' cannot constitute a legal ground for restricting human rights."

(ANKA, 15 September 2026)

This is not a comment, it is settled case-law. The minister's ground — "family and social order" — is an invalid ground in the legal order to which Turkey is a party. A circular cannot suspend the convention the Constitution itself ranks above itself.

Class reading: The international basis of the right to organise is in the same place: ECHR art. 11 and ILO 87. The reason Turkey has lost at the ECtHR over postponed strikes is the same principle: an abstract attribution of value cannot suspend a concrete right. Whoever says "family" today will say "national security" tomorrow. Both are equally invalid.

There is also a method. A raid at 01.00 at night. An allegation of "organisation." Closing an association. The minister declaring guilt from the screen. These are the techniques of 1980. In the 12 September dossier we showed at length: the coup too was presented in the language of "protecting family values," and in the same week DİSK was shut. Even the title of İHD's statement says this: "The 'My Family Is Safe' Operation of the 12 September Mentality."

The return of the technique means the return of the target list as well.

7. Class Reading: Three Articles, One Right

Comrade, grasp the movement here well.

In the Constitution freedom of association is spread across three articles: art. 33 association, art. 34 assembly and demonstration, art. 51 union. The three are three faces of the same right; the three are subject to the same regime of restriction. There is no legal reason why a procedure a judgeship can apply to an association under art. 33 could not be applied to a union under art. 51. The same prosecutor's office, the same ground, the same hour of night.

The Izmir Bar's sentence: "Lawful and legitimate human-rights defence activities cannot be placed under suspicion of crime solely because of the subject of the activities or the rights defended." (13 September 2026) The lock: solely because of the subject of the activity. What an association is founded for cannot narrow the scope of the right of association. The subject that is "LGBTI+ rights" today becomes "workers' rights" tomorrow.

Let us make it concrete. In Who Took the Chair Away we wrote of the one-percent branch threshold, in the Gig Economy Dossier of owner-operator courier work, in the Computing Worker's Handbook of the barrier of branch no. 10. In all three, what was the workers' first form of organising?

The association.

When the barrier in front of founding a union cannot be crossed, the association is the only legal door. In a country where associations can be raided because of the subject of their activity, investigated because of "foreign funds," their accounts shut in a night, what is the security of a courier association?

There is none. The right of association is the anteroom of the right to a union. When the anteroom is raided, the inner room is not safe.

8. Whom Does "We" Cover?

Now we come to the fourth question.

The question put to us is this: "Do you defend LGBTI+ people?" This question, whatever the answer, carries an acceptance inside it: there is a separate community called "them," and "we" will decide about it.

There is no such separation. We showed it in section two: teacher, health worker, call-centre worker, courier, lawyer. Already inside the same class. Already in the same strike tent. Some of them are your workmates, your cousins — you may not know, because in this country people pay a price for saying this.

The working class is not a homogeneous mass, it never was. Woman, man; Turk, Kurd, Arab; Alevi, Sunni, unbelieving; migrant, native; disabled; and yes, LGBTI+. This diversity inside the class is not a defect, it is a fact. Capital knows well how to use this fact as a fault-line. Our job is to close that line, not to deepen it.

Let us make a distinction clear here, because this is the thing that most often gets mixed:

Solidarity is not approval.

What you think about a person's life belongs to your inner world; there you account to no one. We grew up in this country; at school, in the neighbourhood, on the screen a great deal was taught to us, and no one gets up one morning washed clean of it. To notice is already the road itself. No one is putting you through an exam.

But to object to that person being taken from their home at night, tried contrary to law, sacked from work, does not belong to your inner world. It belongs to common life. There, there is an account.

Comradeship is not a feeling, it is a practice. That is what we meant in the Event Organizing and Comradeship guide when we said "To Be Organised, To Take Care." Not to love someone; to have decided in advance to stand beside them in a hard hour. Feeling changes, the decision stands.

Know this as well: these organisations did not speak only for themselves. They issued statements against femicides, they marched at workplace deaths, they built solidarity in the earthquake zone, they raised the demand for peace. Kaos GL's thirty-two years of records are sources we use as well. Solidarity runs both ways and is not kept as a ledger. But let it be known: these people were in our strike as well.

The question of DEM Party co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları: "If by saying 'my family is safe' you put a family's LGBTI+ child in the target, whom are you protecting from whom? Neither the family is safe, nor any of us." (Agos)

9. Official Narrative and Class Reading

Official narrative	Class reading
We are protecting the family	A family's child was taken from their home at night in the name of that family's "safety"
They committed crimes	Parliament twice refused to make it a crime; a law that does not exist is being applied
Obscenity	A photograph of two people kissing — and only theirs
They work with foreign funds	Associations Law art. 21 expressly leaves this free; foundations close to the government take EU funds
It is a court decision	The text of the decision is not published; two grounds under the same number
We targeted particular associations	A day later the list has a newspaper, a union, a human-rights organisation
This is society's demand	In the 2025 "Year of the Family" marriage fell, divorce reached a twenty-five-year peak
This is a matter of morality	Morality is the shortcut of the law — we saw it last week

Write the last line aside; we will enter the three questions from there.

10. Whose Family? — A Care Power-Station

Let us say it at the start: we have no objection to the bond anyone forms with their mother, their child, the one they love. Love is real. We are looking at what the state, when it says "family," is avoiding doing in the budget.

The title of Engels's 1884 book is not in this order for nothing: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. The family is not an eternal unit given by nature; it is a historical institution that changes form with the relations of production and property. The function of its present form can be measured in figures:

Daily time given to household and care work: women 4 hours 3 minutes, men 58 minutes. (TurkStat Time Use 2025)
The total: 146 million hours a day, that is 18 million full-time jobs — larger than half the labour market. (İlkkaracan, May 2026)
Market value: 21–29 percent of GDP. (Gündüz & İlkkaracan, 2019 — with 2006 data; a current calculation was not found)

If the state took this work on, its name would be the crèche. In Turkey the rate of institutional care under the age of three is below 1 percent; the OECD average is 38 percent; Turkey is last in the OECD. (OECD) The crèche obligation in Labour Law art. 88 covers 1,591 of 1.75 million workplaces — one in a thousand. In 2012 44 percent of those obliged had not opened one. Inspection data after 2018 does not exist. (Onur Bakır, Çalışma Ortamı)

The result: the women's employment rate 31.4 percent, men's 65.5 percent. (TurkStat, July 2026) 64 percent of working-age women are outside the labour force; unionisation among women 7 percent. (DİSK/Genel-İş) At TurkStat 11.7 million women are "occupied with housework"; in this category there is not a single man.

Now the budget. The minister, in November 2025 in Parliament: "We allocated 53 percent of our ministry's budget to women — 287 billion 36 million TL." (GNAT)

The ministry's own 2026 appropriation table: the annual appropriation of the General Directorate of the Status of Women is 96 million 363 thousand TL. The General Directorate of Social Assistance 77.3 billion.

The 287 billion is not "to women"; it is a transfer going to the household through women: home-care support, birth allowance, widow's pension. Money that does not bring the woman into the labour force but keeps her inside the household. The infrastructure of the struggle against violence: 112 women's shelters in 81 provinces.

The answer: Whose family? Everyone who benefits from unpaid care labour continuing. "Protecting the family," in the language of the budget, is not setting money aside for 18 million full-time jobs.

11. Safe from What? — Population Is a Labour-Force Policy

The fertility rate: 1.51 in 2023, 1.48 in 2024, 1.42 in 2025 — the lowest in the record. A woman with primary education 2.51 children, a university graduate 1.24. (TurkStat) Those over 65 are 11.1 percent; in 2060 27 percent. (TurkStat)

An ageing population is three things for capital: a narrowing labour supply (wage pressure), a disturbed contribution–pension balance, a growing care load. The "population crisis" is the name of the cheapest solution to these three: increase the population, load care onto the family, package both as a "sacred value."

The incentive: 1,500 TL a month for a second child. (the Ministry) No rise in 2026. The hunger line 37,388 TL. (TÜRK-İŞ, August 2026) Net minimum wage 28,075 TL. A private crèche starts at 20,000 TL a month.

The second-child support is four percent of a four-person family's food spending alone. (The calculation is ours.)

The policy's own examination: in the 2025 "Year of the Family" marriage fell (569,983 → 552,237), divorce rose (188,963 → 193,793), the crude divorce rate is at a twenty-five-year peak. (TurkStat, February 2026) The answer: ten more years of the same policy.

The lesson is not a mocking "it didn't take." The lesson is this: people have children by security, not by circular. A moral answer to an economic question is free. That is the real point.

The answer: Safe from what? From its being spoken. From this policy being discussed.

12. Who Is Not Safe? — What Is Being Covered Over?

On the night of 12 September 2026 in this country:

Kitchen inflation annual 37.90 percent.
In July employment fell by 388 thousand; unemployment among young women 20.3 percent.
Schools opened; starting an upper-secondary pupil costs more than one net minimum wage.
İHD's report was on the table: 77 percent of recorded deaths are workplace murders.

For none of these was a simultaneous operation run in 15 provinces.

The name of the concept is moral panic (Cohen, 1972; Hall, 1978): in a period of tension, without touching the source of the tension, a visible and defenceless section is declared "a threat to the foundation of society"; the state takes extraordinary power; the panic passes, the power remains. It is the form in which a crisis of hegemony is managed. When consent cannot be produced, force comes in; for force to be legitimised an enemy is needed.

Yıldız Tar of Kaos GL, the concept spoken by the person targeted:

"This is an artificial conflict, a political tension-line woven by the hand of power. They are trying to create an image of a monster, but we will not be the useful monsters they are looking for."

(BirGün, 15 September 2026)

And the property underneath. Ülker Street, May 1996: a week before Habitat II, a "cleaning operation" on a street in Cihangir where 80 trans people lived. Homes were raided, one house was burned. The actors: the police ("Hortum Süleyman"), the discourse of honour, the media — and landlords who wanted higher rent. You know what Cihangir is today.

Moral panic is the language of property changing hands. The discourse speaks of morality; the result accumulates as rent. That is why we answer a debate of morality not with morality but with the land register, the tenancy agreement, the budget ledger.

The answer: Who is not safe? Everyone who lives on a wage. The family is truly not safe; but the threat is not the accounts on the list, it is the property relations that had that list written.

13. This Is Not a Deviation, It Is a Line

Date	What happened
2015	Istanbul Pride banned for the first time; 2015–2021 at least 103 detentions (Kaos GL)
20 March 2021	Decision 3718: withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, 02.30 at night
2022	10 bans in 37 days, at least 530 detentions (Kaos GL)
7 October 2023	"We do not recognise LGBT" (NBC)
15 May 2024	Circular No. 2024/6; Population Policy Board No. 172
15 September 2024	"Great Family Gathering", ~400 NGOs (AA)
6 January 2025	"Year of the Family" (Euronews)
November 2025	LGBTI+ provisions taken out of the 11th Judicial Package
December 2025	Genç LGBTİ+ Association closed — the first in years
2 May 2026	Circular No. 2026/4: "Decade of Family and Population"
12 May 2026	ILGA-Europe: Turkey 5 percent, 47 of 49 countries. (Rainbow Map)
June 2026	Taken out of the 12th Judicial Package again; Pride Month: 143+ detentions, 86 accounts blocked (HRFT)
15 August 2026	RTÜK fine on four platforms for "LGBT propaganda" (Milliyet)
12–15 September 2026	"My Family Is Safe"

We could not reach the 2024 detention figure. As the source of those who keep a record narrows, the series breaks.

And this: what was taken out of the 12th Judicial Package together with the LGBTI+ provisions — maintenance, an increase in children's sentences, compulsory identity verification on social media, bringing VPNs under 5651. The same basket. Those who wrote the draft see this as one matter. So should we.

14. Who Spoke, Who Was Silent

Spoke: 114 women's organisations (including Mor Çatı, KCDP, TKDF): "…we will not give up our common struggle against male-dominated and authoritarian policies!" The TTB, the Psychiatric Association of Turkey, TTB-UDEK. KESK (14 September). TMMOB (14 September). DİSK Basın-İş: "Freedom of the press is not only journalists'; it is every citizen's freedom." (15 September) ÇHD Istanbul, the Izmir Bar, the Istanbul Bar. The Human Rights Defenders Solidarity Network (bianet). DEM Party, TİP, EMEP (Sevda Karaca: "To defend LGBTI people's right to life and to organise is to defend everyone's rights and freedom in this country"), SOL Party.

From the world: UN Special Rapporteur Andrea Bolaños Vargas (T24); Council of Europe Commissioner O'Flaherty (above); EP rapporteur Sánchez Amor — "a shocking escalation of repression" (bianet); the European Commission (Euronews); ILGA-Europe, Front Line Defenders, ERA, TGEU — their third demand: "Stop using narratives of 'protection of the family,' 'morality' and the like to legitimise discriminatory restrictions." Paris Mayor Grégoire; Shaheen from the US Senate. (Artı Gerçek)

International support is not an appeal to an external authority; it is the institutional form of international solidarity. It is not Brussels that will save us; but producing a record is valuable, a record one day enters a case file.

Was silent: The centre of the main opposition. DİSK headquarters (Basın-İş spoke). Türk-İş, Hak-İş. TGS, the Press Council — while a newspaper had been blocked, a journalist referred on a request for arrest. The ITUC. The Ankara Bar.

I am writing this not as a list of shame but as a self-criticism from inside. A part of our class organisations still does not count this matter as "their own agenda." In the same week a union's account was shut. The first to be silent becomes the second target — not a threat, last week's case record.

The spine is already in place: women, health workers, public employees, engineers. What is missing are the large unions of the industrial and service branches. Closing that gap is in the hands of the young comrades who read this piece — starting from your own branch.

15. Our Record Is Not a Straight Line

The principle in the Yılmaz Güney piece: neither saint nor villain.

On one side: in the Soviet penal codes of 1922 and 1926 homosexual relations were not a crime — while prison continued in most of Europe. Kollontai defended the socialisation of housework as a programme of the revolution. Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science was raided by the Nazis on 6 May 1933, its library burned. It was among the first books fascism burned.

On the other: in 1934 homosexuality became a crime again in the Soviet Union; divorce was made harder, abortion was banned, the "socialist family" became state ideology. The reason: industrialisation and preparation for war required population. This is not a history to be skipped; it is the strongest proof of our thesis. Whatever the relations of production require, "the family" is redefined accordingly — in right-wing governments and in bureaucratic administrations alike.

On the Turkish left too, for long years it was called a "petty-bourgeois deviation." It was a mistake; the divided class movement paid the price. A movement that can see the mistake is a movement that can correct it.

Cuba, on 26 September 2022, accepted a new Family Code with about 66 percent yes: same-sex marriage and the legal recognition of domestic care labour in the same text. (Euronews) Two faces of the same question.

The first step on this soil: 27 April 1987. A hunger strike in Gezi Park; on the second day 25 people. The demand was a single article: not to be beaten. (Kaos GL) In the shadow of the 12 September regime, the most defenceless section, with its body, a demand of law. Thirty-nine years later the doors were broken at 01.00 at night.

To know this is not to pay a debt to anyone. To know our own class's history without omission.

16. Concrete Tasks

Comrade, reading this piece and becoming angry is of no use. Anger, until it turns into organising, passes in a week. These can be done:

Carry the debate onto the right ground. To the question "Do you defend LGBTI+ people?": "I am against the application of a law that did not pass Parliament. Are you not?" To pass from identity to law is the smallest and most effective intervention.
Show the twenty-four hours. The 12 September decision, the 13 September decision. Evrensel, Amnesty, MLSA, UMUT-SEN. This single datum ends most "what's it to me."
Carry eight articles in your pocket. The law that did not pass · legality · the presumption of innocence · Associations Law art. 21 · the unpublished decision · a list that lengthened in a day · ECtHR case-law · the 12 September method. Each a single sentence, a source under it.
Put your union on this agenda. A single question on the branch agenda: "If the procedure in this operation were applied to us, what would we do?" Then into the draft collective agreement a clause of prohibition of discrimination and not being dismissed for organising activity. Not a petition, a contract.
Claim the associations. The first organisation of the worker who cannot found a union is the association. The legal security of the courier association, of the computing association, is being determined today by the procedure applied to LGBTI+ associations.
Ask for the texts of the decisions. Right to Information Law No. 4982 is everyone's right; a reply is obligatory in fifteen working days. One application opens one datum.
Support those who keep a record. EngelliWeb, Kaos GL, İHD, HRFT, MLSA. Become a member, read the report, spread the data.
Go to the hearing. Izmir, Genç LGBTİ+ Association trial, 14 October 2026. An open hearing. People in the room are not the only thing that determines the decision, but they are among the things that determine it.
Speak with a figure, not with an adjective. Three figures: 1,500 TL, 37,388 TL, 96.4 million TL. All three from official sources.
Take care of your own ranks. Object to the humiliating joke, to the "not our agenda" brush-off — without backing anyone into a corner, by explaining. Know Kollontai and 1934 at the same time.
If you are a computing worker, take on the technical load. Take an archive of the shut accounts (wget, ArchiveBox, Wayback), set up a mirror, give infrastructure support. The only thing that brings back what has been deleted is a copy taken in advance.
Do not leave them alone. There are the families of those detained, those waiting in front of the courthouse, those looking for a lawyer. A solidarity fund, a courthouse watch, a telephone. This is what it means to be organised; this is what it means to take care.

Dear Young Comrades,

We gave three answers to three questions. Whose family? Those who benefit from unpaid care labour. Safe from what? From its being spoken. Who is not safe? Everyone who lives on a wage.

The answer to the fourth question is now clear as well. "We" covers everyone who lives on a wage. Everyone who shares the same shift, the same service bus, the same rent. These people's lives do not resemble one another, and they need not. No one is asking anyone for a certificate of approval. The only thing asked is that when one person's door is knocked, the other not stay silent — because the same door, in turn, is all of ours.

When the state says "I am protecting the family," what it protects is not love, it is the accounts. So that those accounts not be discussed, an enemy figure is put forward; an instrument is made to silence the enemy; once the instrument is made it is pointed at everyone. Last week we saw this last twenty-four hours.

Recognise that instrument today. Note the decision number. Read the budget ledger once with your own eyes. And do not leave the one beside you alone.

Comradeship is not making people resemble one another. It is people who do not resemble one another deciding to stand in the same rank.

Comradely.

Knowledge belongs to everyone.

Related Pieces

The other half of this wave

From Obscenity to National Security: The Anatomy of a Forty-Eight-Hour Wave of Censorship — the anatomy of a forty-eight-hour wave of censorship; who is on the list, what the ground is, who gave the decision

The repressive apparatus and surveillance

12 September: The History, Balance Sheet, and Present of a Class Coup — the founding example of class operations presented on moral grounds
Two Towers, One World: Twenty-Five Years of September 11 — terrorist → migrant → dissident → worker
The Panopticon's Doorkeeper
KVKK's "80s Trend" Warning and Privacy in the Digital Age
Reading the İHD 2025 Report Through a Class Lens

Labour and organising

The Computing Worker's Handbook — the barrier of branch no. 10
Gig Economy Dossier — owner-operator courier work
Who Took the Chair Away — the one-percent branch threshold
Event Organizing and Comradeship — "To Be Organised, To Take Care"
The Bell Does Not Ring the Same for Everyone

Reaction and reckoning

Sources

Starting point

Tuğba İyigün, X, 15 September 2026 — the text that honestly asks the "what's it to me" question

Legislation and international law

Constitution — arts. 10, 33, 34, 38, 51, 90
TPC No. 5237 — arts. 2, 226 · Associations Law No. 5253 — art. 21 · 5651 — arts. 8, 8/A · Labour Law No. 4857 — arts. 5, 88 · Right to Information Law No. 4982
European Convention on Human Rights — arts. 10, 11 · ILO 87
Presidential Circular No. 2026/4, Official Gazette 2 May 2026, no. 33241 · İHD's objection

The operation

Reaction and solidarity

İHD · joint statement of LGBTI+ associations · Yıldız Tar, BirGün · 114 women's organisations · TTB, TPD, TTB-UDEK · KESK · TMMOB · DİSK Basın-İş · Izmir Bar · Human Rights Defenders Solidarity Network · Medyascope — "Who said what?"
DEM Party, Agos · TİP, ANKA · EMEP and others · SOL Party
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights · EP rapporteur · European Commission · UN Special Rapporteur · ILGA-Europe joint statement · Other international reactions

Reports and data

History

Kaos GL — 1987 Hunger Strike · FeministBellek — Ülker Street · Istanbul Convention chronology · Kaos GL — 2015–2021 balance sheet · Kaos GL — 2022 balance sheet · Cuba Family Code

Theoretical background

Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
Alexandra Kollontai, writings on the socialisation of domestic labour
Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972); Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis (1978)