Şermin Sarı, 33, a mother of two, on Thursday was fatally hit in the head with a rock by her ex-husband in the garden of her house in the southern Turkish province of Adana, the Evrensel daily reported.
Sarı’s neighbors called the emergency help line and reported the situation after hearing her screams for help. The young woman was lying motionless when police and medical teams arrived, declaring her dead at the scene.
Police detained Sarı’s ex-husband, identified as Erhan P., whom she divorced two years ago. Sarı had filed a complaint against her ex-husband a few days earlier, saying he was threatening to kill her.
Femicides and violence against women are serious problems in Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten every day. According to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform (Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu), 187 women were murdered and 142 women had died under suspicious circumstances in Turkey alone by August 2022.
Many 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 granting them impunity.
Victims of violence have said Turkish authorities are ineffective in combatting violence. They say their complaints to the police about abusive partners go unanswered and are ignored.
In a move that attracted national and international outrage, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan through a presidential decree pulled the country out of an international treaty in March 2021 that requires governments to adopt legislation prosecuting perpetrators of domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.
The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, is an international accord designed to protect women’s rights and prevent domestic violence in societies and was opened to signature of member countries of the Council of Europe in 2011.
