Turkey’s president has taken a swipe at the Eurovision song contest, accusing the annual event of allegedly encouraging “gender neutralisation” and threatening the traditional family. In a speech after a cabinet meeting, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described participants at the contest as the “Trojan horses of social corruption” and said his government was right to keep Turkey out of the pan-European pop competition since 2012. It was an apparent reference to Swiss singer Nemo who won the 68th Eurovision song contest earlier this month with “The Code”, an operatic pop-rap ode to the singer’s journey toward embracing a nongender identity. The 24-year-old singer became the first nonbinary winner of the contest that has long been embraced as a safe haven by the LGBTQ community. “At such events, it has become impossible to meet a normal person,” said Erdoğan, whose ruling Justice and Development party finds its roots in Turkey’s Islamic movement and whose government has grown less tolerant of LGBTQ rights in recent years. “We understand better how we made the right decision by keeping Turkey out of this disgraceful competition for the past 12 years,” he said. Erdoğan on Monday also decried a serious decline in birthrates in Turkey as an “existential threat” and a “disaster” for the country. Last week, Turkey’s State Statistical Institute announced that the country’s birthrate in 2023 had dropped to 1.51 children a woman. The Turkish leader has long called on families to have at least three children.