Women across Turkey attempted to take to the streets on Tuesday for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, with authorities imposing sweeping bans, transportation closures and police barriers in İstanbul, Turkish Minute reported.
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is observed every year on November 25.
In İstanbul the governor’s office once again moved to block women’s access to the city’s symbolic protest sites. Citing security concerns, the governor’s office closed central Taksim Square and the surrounding streets and ordered the suspension of services at the Taksim metro station and the Taksim–Kabataş funicular from 3 p.m., while police barricades sealed off approaches to the area.
The 25 November Platform, which had called for an evening march in Taksim with the slogan “Bring your anger, your rebellion, your resistance,” urged women to gather in the nearby Tünel area at 7:30 p.m. despite the restrictions.
Similar rallies are planned in dozens of provinces, including Ankara, İzmir, Adana, Antalya, Bursa, Diyarbakır, Van and Şanlıurfa, where women’s groups say they will take to the streets to defend their right to life and protest male violence.
A day of resistance, not just remembrance
The day’s origins lie in the struggle of the Mirabal sisters — Patria, Minerva and María Teresa — who were murdered on November 25, 1960, for resisting the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Latin American and Caribbean women’s movements first declared November 25 as a day against violence in 1981, and in 1999 the UN General Assembly officially recognized it as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
UN data show that one in three women worldwide experiences physical or sexual violence in her lifetime. Research in Turkey indicates that roughly four in 10 women face violence from a husband or intimate partner. Rights advocates stress that gender-based violence is not an individual problem but a structural human rights violation with social, economic and political dimensions.
Turkey’s main legal tool for combating domestic violence, Law No. 6284, is intended to provide protection orders, remove perpetrators from the home and mandate preventive measures. Women’s groups say the law remains strong on paper but is undermined by weak implementation, delayed protection orders and insufficient monitoring of restraining orders.
According to figures from the We Will Stop Femicide Platform, at least 235 women were killed by men in Turkey between January and October 2025, while at least 247 women were found dead under suspicious circumstances. Many of the victims had sought help or filed complaints before they were murdered.
A recent study commissioned by Borusan Holding and conducted by pollster KONDA found that 26 percent of women in Turkey report experiencing physical violence, 13 percent sexual violence and 10 percent economic violence, while 17 percent say they have been subjected to stalking.
Twenty-eight percent say they know someone in their immediate circle whom they believe is suffering violence but cannot speak about it. The survey also shows that digital platforms are emerging as a major arena of abuse: 14 percent of women say they have been targeted online and nearly one in five women has had to hide or close a social media account due to harassment.
Across the country around 22 percent of women say they have an emergency call application installed on their phones, a figure that rises to 39 percent among women aged 18 to 24. The study notes that younger, more educated women are at the forefront of a shift towards believing and amplifying survivors’ accounts, with large majorities — over 80 percent — saying that disclosures of harassment and violence should be trusted and made public.
Turkey remains the only Council of Europe member state to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, a landmark treaty on preventing and combating violence against women. Women’s organizations say the pullout, coupled with a lack of political will, has weakened protective mechanisms and fuelled a climate of impunity.
In a statement to mark the day, the Ankara-based Flying Broom Foundation said gender-based violence has deepened due to “policies of impunity” and called the failure to address it and the encouragement of perpetrators “a political choice.” The group urged a return to the Istanbul Convention and the full implementation of Law No. 6284 without reopening it to debate.
The group also recalled the legacy of the Mirabal sisters and the long history of women’s organizing in Turkey, emphasizing that women’s and girls’ access to justice is “vital” and that younger legal professionals are increasingly being trained in gender-based violence through projects in law faculties across the country.
Amnesty International also urged Turkish authorities to protect women’s right to peaceful assembly on Monday, ahead of the November 25 demonstrations, recalling that prosecutors brought charges against 168 people detained during last year’s protests. The organization also reiterated its call for Turkey to return to the Istanbul Convention, warning that legal safeguards for women have eroded since the 2021 withdrawal.
While the European Union has recently strengthened its own legal framework — becoming a party to the Istanbul Convention and adopting a directive that criminalizes forms of digital violence such as non-consensual image sharing, deepfakes and cyberstalking — women’s groups in Turkey say the country is moving in the opposite direction, narrowing protections and criminalizing street protests.
For many activists, November 25 in Turkey is less a day of commemoration than one of confrontation, as women attempt to march in city centers under the watch of riot police and blocked metro stations.
