At least 315 women were killed by men in Turkey in 2023, the Cumhuriyet daily reported, citing numbers from the We Will Stop Femicide Platform (Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız).
According to the platform, there has been a drastic increase in the number of femicide cases compared to 2022, when 245 women were murdered. Nearly half the women were killed by their husbands, and most in their homes.
Fidan Ataselim from the We Will Stop Femicide Platform said in a statement that women were violently killed every day. “We are documenting each death to keep a record of what is happening concerning gender-based violence. What we’re seeing now is that most incidents are perpetrated by men close to the victim,” Ataselim said. “In most cases men fatally shot their partners, and we need to question why they have easy access to guns.”
Ataselim said it was essential that authorities enforced laws and regulations that were designed to protect women, especially Law No. 6284, a domestic provision that provides protection mechanisms for women and children who have suffered or are deemed at risk of suffering domestic violence.
Conservative political allies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been pressuring the government to abolish the law.
Femicides and violence against women are chronic problems in Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten almost every day. Many critics say the main reason behind the situation is the policies of the AKP government, which protects violent and abusive men by granting them impunity.
Turkish courts have repeatedly drawn criticism due to their tendency to hand down lenient sentences to offenders, claiming that the crime was “motivated by passion” or by interpreting victims’ silence as consent.
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 the signature of Council of Europe member countries in 2011.
Erdoğan’s allies have been calling for further rollbacks, urging the repeal of Law No. 6284.
Since Turkey’s withdrawal from the treaty, Turkish authorities have been pressuring women’s rights organizations over their activist work.
Despite the pressure, the organizations have said they will continue monitoring violence and femicide in the country.
