Twenty-nine women were murdered by men in Turkey in August, while another 28 were found dead under suspicious circumstances, according to a statement released on Thursday by the We Will Stop Femicide Platform.
The platform said three women were killed for attempting to make decisions about their own lives, such as filing for divorce, rejecting reconciliation, refusing marriage or ending a relationship. Seven women were murdered due to financial disputes, and one woman was allegedly killed out of misogynistic hatred. The motives behind 18 of the murders could not be established.
The report noted that 65 percent of the women were killed by a male family member and that 74 percent of the murders took place in the victims’ own homes. Nearly half of the women, 48 percent, were killed with firearms.
Founded in 2010 and formally registered as an association in 2012, the We Will Stop Femicide Platform has consistently documented gender-based violence in Turkey.
The platform emphasized that impunity remains the most acute injustice in femicide cases. Perpetrators are often never prosecuted, are acquitted in court or are protected by fabricated claims that the women died by suicide. This entrenched climate of impunity, the group warned, paves the way for further femicides and emboldens perpetrators.
Femicides and violence against women are serious problems in Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten every day. Critics say the main reason behind the situation is the policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, which protects violent and abusive men by affording them impunity.
This criticism intensified following Turkey’s controversial withdrawal from the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention.
The convention is an international accord designed to protect women’s rights and prevent domestic violence in societies and was opened to the signature of member countries of the council in 2011.
Despite opposition from the international community and women’s rights groups, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a decree in March 2021 that pulled the country out of the international treaty, which requires governments to adopt legislation prosecuting perpetrators of domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.
Erdoğan claimed the treaty had been “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality,” which he said was “incompatible” with Turkey’s “social and family values.”
Turkey officially withdrew from the convention on July 1, 2021.
Turkey was ranked 127th out of 146 countries with respect to inequalities between men and women in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2024.
