At least 294 women were murdered by men in Turkey in 2025, while 297 more died under suspicious circumstances, according to an annual report released on Friday by leading women’s rights group the We Will Stop Femicide Platform.
The report found that 85 percent of the women were killed by a close male relative, including husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends or ex-boyfriends, fathers, sons or brothers. Sixty-one percent of them were murdered in their homes.
While the number of femicides fell compared to last year, suspicious deaths surpassed the murder figures, reaching a record high, up from 259 in 2024 and 250 in 2023.
At least 69 women were killed over their decisions concerning their own lives, such as seeking a divorce, refusing reconciliation or rejecting a romantic relationship or a marriage proposal. Twenty-nine women were murdered due to financial disputes. The motives behind 179 murders are unknown.
The victims were predominantly young, with 79 women aged between 25 and 35.
Alarmingly, 23 women were killed despite being under state protection, raising renewed questions about the effectiveness of protective measures.
Firearms continued to claim an increasing number of lives, with 57 percent of the women shot, up from 56 percent in 2024 and 48 percent in 2021.
Violence against women remains a pervasive problem in Turkey, where women are frequently killed, raped or subjected to physical abuse, according to women’s rights groups and monitoring organizations.
The women’s rights groups stressed that impunity remains the most acute injustice in femicide cases. Perpetrators are often never prosecuted, are acquitted or benefit from claims that the women died by suicide.
Critics say policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government contribute to the problem by allowing perpetrators to avoid accountability. Such criticism intensified after Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, formally known as the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.
The convention is an international accord that requires governments to adopt legislation prosecuting perpetrators of domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.
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.
