Families of women in Turkey whose deaths were officially ruled suicides are challenging hundreds of such cases, accusing authorities of failing to conduct thorough investigations and overlooking possible femicide, according to a report by The Guardian.
The issue has attracted renewed attention through the cases of Şebnem Köker and Aysun Yıldırım, whose deaths in 2021 and 2018, respectively, were ruled suicides after they fell from buildings in İstanbul.
Köker fell from the window of a hotel where she was staying with her boyfriend, while Yıldırım fell from her office window. In both cases families say prosecutors closed the investigations as suicides without adequately examining the evidence.
Relatives, lawyers and women’s rights advocates say investigators frequently failed to adequately examine the role of the men who were in relationships with the victims and present at the locations when the deaths occurred.
Subsequent reviews prompted by families’ persistent legal efforts found that basic investigative procedures, including examination of CCTV footage, DNA analysis, fingerprint collection and phone records, were either overlooked or inadequately conducted. Families also point to contradictions in suspects’ statements that were never properly addressed.
The victims’ relatives believe Turkish authorities discriminated against them by failing to investigate the deaths adequately because of the victims’ gender. They accuse officials of ignoring or obscuring cases of femicide, although there was enough evidence for a criminal case.
According to Turkish government data, one in four recorded female suicides is classified as “throwing oneself from a high place,” with 250 women dying in this way in 2024.
Women’s rights advocates argue that such classification practices result in undercounting of femicides in Turkey. The We Will Stop Femicide Platform (KCDP) reported 294 femicides and 297 suspicious deaths in 2025.
Gülsüm Kav, founder of the KCDP, said the increase in suicide cases classified as falls from heights is linked to improved forensic techniques. Previously, deaths due to poisoning were more prevalent, but advances in blood testing now allow authorities to verify such causes. “So, we see a decrease in that and an increase in deaths by falling. It’s harder to prove if these are a suicide, an accident or a femicide,” she said.
Legal challenges continue in both cases. Köker’s boyfriend, who was in the hotel room that night, was acquitted in 2022, with the court citing a “lack of concrete evidence.” Following an appeal by the family, Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals’ prosecutor’s office said in June 2024 that the initial trial failed to examine critical evidence. Yıldırım’s family has applied to the Constitutional Court and is preparing to bring the case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
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 KCDP stressed that impunity remains the most acute injustice in femicide cases. Perpetrators are often never prosecuted, receive acquittals or benefit from claims that the women died by suicide. This climate of impunity enables further violence, the platform warned.
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.
