The “We Will Stop Femicide Platform” reported that in Turkey, 34 women were murdered by men, and 20 more died under suspicious circumstances in September alone. | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images
Rights campaigners in Turkey have long suspected that combating violence against women is not a priority for the Islamist AKP ruling party.
The “We Will Stop Femicide Platform” reported that in Turkey, 34 women were murdered by men, and 20 more died under suspicious circumstances in September alone.
According to The Monument Counter, a digital platform that updates the unofficial numbers of women killed in the country, 297 women have been killed in 2024 so far. The toll was 416 in 2023.
Last week, Semih Çelik, 19, killed and beheaded a woman named İkbal Uzuner, before killing himself. The murderer threw Uzuner’s head from Istanbul’s historic city walls while her mother was present. Çelik also killed another young woman, Ayşenur Halil, by slitting her throat the same day.
Turkey has blocked the instant messaging platform Discord amid reports that Discord users had praised the gruesome killings of the two women by Çelik.
During the protest, signs reading “Ministry, open your eyes, women were killed here” were displayed, alongside chants such as “Violence will not go unpunished,” “Perpetrators will not go unpunished,” “AKP, don’t just watch, enforce the law,” “You will never walk alone,” and “What women need is equality, not family,”
In addition to the two women killed in Istanbul, the murders of Sonay Öztürk by Aslan Uğur Araç in Mersin’s Mezitli district, and Bedriye Işık by specialist sergeant Muhammed Recai Işık in Diyarbakır, were also protested in Bursa and Mersin provinces.
The Bursa Women’s Platform organized a sit-in protest and press statement in response to the growing femicides.
Women chanted slogans such as “Today I could be the next while we scream for İkbal, Ayşegül, and Rojin,” and “We are not a family, we are women. Women are in rebellion,” along with “No obedience, only resistance” and “We will not be the ideal woman. We will not be silent, we are not afraid, we will not obey.”
In the press release, it was emphasized that “while a man murders two women in Istanbul, the state fails to take any protective, preventive, or deterrent measures.”
The state, through its judiciary and law enforcement, only acts based on social media reactions rather than the testimonies of those subjected to violence. Women facing male violence are turning to social media instead of police stations to make their voices heard and escape abuse. -Bursa Women’s Platform
In response to the growing public anger, on Wednesday, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told his ruling AK Party’s parliamentary group that he would toughen up the sentence enforcement system.
But many women are skeptical of Erdoğan’s latest promise, since the president unilaterally decided to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention — which is designed to prevent and combat violence against women — in 2021, under the pretext that some of its clauses are harmful to traditional family structures. The convention also aims to protect LGBTQ+ communities in the country.
