Turkish President Calls Eurovision Song Contest a Threat to Family Values and Accuses It of Promoting 'Gender Neutralisation'
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised the Eurovision Song Contest and accused the organisers of promoting "gender neutralisation" and threatening the traditional family, AP reports.
He said this in a speech after a cabinet meeting and called the contestants "Trojan horses of social corruption." He added that his government was right to exclude Turkey from the pan-European pop contest since 2012.
"It's impossible to meet a normal person at such events," said Erdogan, whose ruling Justice and Development Party has roots in Turkey's Islamic movement and whose government has become less tolerant of LGBTQ rights in recent years.
This was an obvious reference to Swiss singer Nemo, who won the 68th Eurovision Song Contest earlier this month with The Code, an operatic pop-rap ode about the singer's journey to acceptance of a non-gender identity. The 24-year-old singer became the first non-binary winner of the contest, which has long been seen as a safe haven for the LGBT community.
"We better understand how we made the right decision by keeping Turkey out of this shameful competition for the past 12 years," Erdogan said.
He also called the serious decline in the birth rate in Turkey an "existential threat" and a "catastrophe" for the country, as last week the Turkish Statistical Institute announced that the country's birth rate in 2023 fell to 1.51 children per woman.
The Turkish president has long called on families to have at least three children.