In Turkey, where nearly 300 women have been murdered this year, a series of high-profile cases of femicide by convicted criminals have sparked protests across the country, prompting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to pledge to toughen the country’s criminal laws, with hundreds of protesters in several cities calling on the government to end impunity and step up its crackdown on the wave of violence, on Thursday, 10th of October, reports Politico.
Critics say the ruling AK Party has failed to prioritise women’s safety, with public outrage now pushing the issue to the forefront.
Last week, 19-year-old Semih Çelik shocked the nation by brutally killing and beheading a young girl, then throwing her head off Istanbul’s city walls in front of her mother and killing another young woman the same day by slitting her throat.
This happened after a suspect, who also had a long criminal record, killed a policewoman in September.
In response to growing public anger over the murders, President Erdogan said in a speech to his AK Party on Wednesday the 9th of October that the nation was justifiably outraged by the recent brutal killings.
“We are as concerned as anyone that criminals are walking free with dozens of cases on their criminal records,” he added, promising to toughen the penal system and end early release.
But many women are sceptical of Erdogan’s latest pledge, since the President unilaterally decided to withdraw in 2021 from the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, on the sole pretext that some of its articles undermine traditional family values. The Convention also aims to protect LGBTQ+ communities in the country.
The platform “We Will Stop Feminicide” has reported that 34 women were killed by men in Turkey in September alone and another 20 women died under suspicious circumstances.
The Digital Memorial to Women Who Have Died from Violence, which updates unofficial data on the number of women killed in the country, reports that 297 women have been killed so far in 2024. In 2023, the number was 416.
Women’s rights activist Hülya Gülbahar argued that Turkey’s law “No 6284”, which aims to protect women from violence, is strong but not properly enforced, saying that otherwise “thousands of women’s lives would have been saved…”, adding that “impunity is a systematic state policy”.
Public outrage at what is happening has increased in Turkey, with celebrities, politicians and social media users speaking out.
Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç announced on Wednesday the decision of an Ankara court to ban Discord in the country over allegations of its use in crimes of “child sexual abuse and obscenity”.
There have also been reports that Discord users have glorified the brutal murders committed by Çelik.
Ceren Kalay Eken, a women’s rights lawyer, argued that Turkey has fallen into a spiral of violence, worsened by the government’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. “The state cannot protect women and children,”she said, noting that after 22 years of AK Party rule, young boys are becoming “victims or murderers.”