Seven women were killed by their spouses or ex-partners across Turkey on Tuesday, according to a census by private broadcaster Haber Türk.
“A total of seven women were brutally murdered in Izmir, Bursa, Sakarya, Erzurum, Denizli and Istanbul,” reports Haber Türk, mentioning both the country’s major cities in the west and the economic capital Istanbul, Bursa and Izmir. on the Aegean coast, than in Sakarya (north) or Erzurum in eastern Anatolia, which are said to be more conservative.
“The suspects were either their current spouses or spouses from whom they were separated,” specifies the broadcaster, which gives the names of the victims and shows a photo of each of them on its website.
These women, aged 32 to 49, were killed by bullets or stab wounds; At least three of the murderers ended their lives, two were arrested, and another injured person died during his arrest.
The fate of the seventh, who escaped from prison to kill his wife, was not explained.
In 2023, the women's rights platform “We will stop femicide” recorded 315 murders of women – including 65% in their homes – and 248 “suspicious deaths”, which authorities described as “suicides” but which feminists attributed to one Thirdly, he referred to the suspicious increase in window falls in Turkey.
The country withdrew from the Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women, the so-called Istanbul Convention, in 2021, which requires authorities to investigate and punish violence against women.
Conversely, the NGOs point out that “the only year in fifteen years in which the number of femicides decreased was 2011, the year in which the Istanbul Convention was adopted”.
A case initiated in 2022 by an Istanbul prosecutor against the “We Will Stop Feminicides” platform with the aim of banning it for “immoral activities” was finally dropped in September.