Turkey’s interior minister blames women for femicide

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya

In Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten every day, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya blamed women for contributing to femicide when they do not observe protective measures in controversial remarks, Turkish Minute reported on Thursday.

Yerlikaya said during a discussion in Parliament on Thursday that many victims of femicide were partly to blame for their deaths. He referred to cases where, despite having legal protection orders, women “opened the door” to their killers when they arrived at their home.

“Last year, 32 women, despite our warnings, opened their door when the man came knocking and were killed inside,” Yerlikaya said, defending the government’s actions in the face of growing criticism over a rising rate of femicide.

The minister’s remarks sparked outrage from opposition lawmakers, including some from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).

The MPs accused Yerlikaya of shifting the blame onto women, suggesting that it was easy to blame the victims instead of addressing the problems and shortcomings in the legal mechanisms.

According to the minister, 284 women were killed in 2022, followed by 309 in 2023 and 276 in the first ten months of 2024.

The Bianet news website examined reports from local and national newspapers, news websites and agencies, and reported that men have killed at least 344 women and injured 558 others in Turkey during the 322 days between Jan. 1 and Nov. 18 of this year.

According to the report, at least 263 women were reported to have “died under suspicious circumstances” in the media during the same period, while men harassed 110 women, abused 201 children, forced at least 544 women into sex work and killed at least 40 children.

At least 242 women were killed by their husbands or male partners, while 62 women were murdered by male family members, such as fathers and sons. Of the murders committed during this year, 215 women were killed with firearms and 90 women were killed with knives.

The number of women killed was at least 288 in 2023, 327 in 2022, 239 in 2021, 284 in 2020, 328 in 2019 and 255 in 2018, according to Bianet.

Femicide and violence against women and girls are chronic problems in Turkey.

Many critics say a main reason for the current situation is the policies of the Justice and Development Party government, which often protect violent and abusive men by granting them impunity. The party’s conservative outlook has empowered patriarchal mindsets that dominate the country.

Turkish courts have repeatedly drawn criticism due to their tendency to grant 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, in March 2021, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used a presidential decree to withdraw Turkey from an international treaty 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. It was opened for signature of Council of Europe member countries in 2011 and entered into force in 2014.

Erdoğan’s allies have been calling for further rollbacks, urging the repeal of a Turkish law that stipulates protection mechanisms for women who either have suffered or are at risk of experiencing violence.

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