Turkey’s Femicide Epidemic: How Many More Women Will Die?
By Jova Bostanci, LLM Human Rights, Conflict and Justice
“Statistically 7 women in Turkey are ‘savagely killed’ by current or ex-spouses in a single day”
This statistic, reported by Turkish television station Habertürk, reflects a terrifying reality for women and girls in Turkey.
Violence against women in Turkey is not a new phenomenon, but the alarming rise in femicide rates has drawn global attention. A major turning point occurred in 2021 when the government of President Erdoğan withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, a historic agreement aimed at preventing violence against women. The treaty was originally ratified by Turkey in 2011, and at first, femicide instances significantly decreased as a result of its adoption. The withdrawal was a disastrous reversal and violence against women increased once more. Critics argue that this decision sent a dangerous message: women’s safety is not a priority.
Bahriye Üçok, a pioneering Turkish academic, politician, and women's rights advocate was a vocal defender of secularism and gender equality in Turkey. Her tragic assassination in 1990 serves as a grim reminder of the dangers faced by women who challenge oppressive systems. Decades later, femicide in Turkey remains a critical issue, reflecting a deeply rooted societal problem. Today, the issue has gained even greater significance, as the number of women murdered by men continues to rise, highlighting the urgent need for systemic change.
In October last year, a 19-year-old Turkish man killed and beheaded a woman named İkbal Uzuner, before throwing her head from Istanbul’s historic city walls while her mother was present. He had also killed another young woman, Ayşenur Halil, by slitting her throat the same day. A week earlier, a young policewoman had been killed while on duty. In August, the case of a missing schoolgirl kept the country in suspense for weeks until her deceased body was found by a river in southeastern Anatolia.
In the wake of the brutal murders of İkbal Uzuner and Ayşenur Halil in October, President Erdogan deflected responsibility by initially blaming alcohol and social media- a familiar tactic he has used to avoid addressing systemic issues of femicide against women while framing them as consequences of secularism. Despite his subsequent promise to toughen the justice system and crack down harder on crime, such pledges have repeatedly gone unfulfilled.
The women’s movement, one of the most organized and resilient forces in Turkey, responded to these brutal murders with nationwide outrage. Hundreds of women took to the streets, accusing President Erdoğan of failing to protect women from violence. At a protest in Istanbul, organizer Gunes Fadime Aksahin addressed the crowd, chanting, “You are a government that lets young girls get killed.”
Gulizar Sezer, the mother of a young woman who was murdered, also spoke at the rally, declaring, “I want an end to the massacre of our girls”. Her daughter’s body was discovered in June 2024 after horrifyingly thrown into the sea and wrapped in a carpet.
While this case is shockingly horrifying, violence against women is not new in Turkey. According to the television station Haberturk "In total, seven women were savagely killed in Izmir, Bursa, Sakarya, Erzurum, Denizli and Istanbul,”. They also stated that “The suspects were either their current spouses, or spouses from whom they were separated,” They then listed the victims with their photographs on its website.
Rates of femicide and violence against women became increasingly alarming after President Erdoğan and his government withdrew from the Istanbul Convention in 2021. The treaty, a human rights agreement of the Council of Europe aimed at combating violence against women and domestic violence, was originally signed by Turkey in 2011. Following its adoption, cases of femicide and violence against women declined significantly. However, after Turkey's withdrawal, these rates surged once again.
While speaking during the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in 2023, Erdoğan argued that the withdrawal had not increased violence against women.
In 2019 alone, 474 women were killed, it was the year in which most women were killed in the country in the last 10 years. According to the annual report of “We Will Stop Femicide Platform”, 300 women were murdered by men in 2020, and 171 women were found suspiciously dead.
According to The Monument Counter, a digital platform tracking unofficial femicide statistics in Turkey, 443 women were murdered in 2024. In contrast, the website recorded 68 femicides in 2008, a stark difference over the years.
As of February 20, 2025, the toll stands at 56. Created in 2013 after failed attempts to obtain government data. It provides detailed records for each victim, including their name, age, location, date of death, cause, method, and perpetrator, with sources for verification.
So why is femicide in Turkey so underreported by Western media and the international community? The UN Women’s Rights Committee has voiced serious concerns, yet violence against women in Turkey continues to rise. Why are these murders increasing, and why aren’t stronger actions being taken to prevent them?
The patriarchal system is widely recognised as a key driver of violence against women. During a 2024 protest in Istanbul, demonstrators rallied with the chant, “The problem is the patriarchy! The problem is the government!” They condemned the government’s religion-driven, conservative family policies, arguing that these policies perpetuate and exacerbate gender-based violence.
Numerous court cases involving the murder of women have highlighted the severity of the crisis. ‘Opuz v. Turkey’ (2009) is a landmark case at the European Court of Human Rights which set a critical precedent regarding domestic violence and gender-based discrimination. The case demonstrated the lack of care for women’s safety against domestic violence as Nahide Opuz alleged that the Turkish authorities failed to protect her and her mother from her abusive ex-partner.
While this significant case raised awareness and set international legal precedents, it has not stopped the violence. Turkey’s government continues to fall short in protecting women.
The case ‘Halime Kılıç v. Turkey’ (2016) was brought before the European Court of Human Rights. The applicant accused Turkish authorities of failing to protect his deceased daughter from repeated acts of violence and death threats by her husband, who ultimately shot and killed her.
Once again, President Erdoğan and his government have failed to take meaningful action to protect women from violence, leaving countless lives at risk and perpetuating a culture of impunity. In facing these allegations, Erdogan vowed to strengthen legal regulations concerning crimes against women and promised to set up a new unit at the Justice Ministry to monitor such cases.
President Erdoğan, who served as prime minister from 2003 to 2014 and has been president of Turkey since 2014, has a long history of making misogynistic comments. In his own words, he has been cited as contributing to the problem. In 2014, he stated it is “against nature” to “put men and women on equal footing,” and argued that feminists do not understand the importance of motherhood. He also called women who work as “half persons”.
Erdogan also uses Islam to get what he wants. He reconstructs it into his own conservative Islam. “Family planning, birth control, these are not things that a Muslim family should consider,” Erdogan said in a live TV address in May 2016 to an educational foundation in Istanbul.
Pro-government Islamist brotherhoods have repeatedly called for existing laws that are supposed to protect women to be abolished and for alimony payments to be limited, as have parties in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling alliance.
Despite the Turkish president’s apparent indifference to the rising femicide rates and his arguably complicit stance, women across the country continue to fight against gender-based violence. One of the leading organisations in this struggle is ‘We Will Stop Femicides,’ a prominent Turkish NGO dedicated to protecting women’s rights. The platform has been campaigning since 2010.
They became the target of fierce criticism from Islamic conservatives after speaking out against Erdogan’s 2021 decision to withdraw Turkey from the Istanbul Convention.
On their website, they outline that the platform’s objective is to strive for “Stopping femicide and ensuring their protection from violence. It fights against all types of women's rights violations, starting with the violation of the right to life.”
They also suggest their solutions are:
“To stop femicide we request our 5 basic demands, which originated from our experience in this struggle, to be fulfilled:
1- The president, the prime minister and the leaders of all political parties should condemn violence against women.
2- The protection law No. 6284 should be efficiently implemented.
3- Our legislative proposal to add an additional clause to the Turkish Penal Code regarding “aggravated life imprisonment” should be accepted.
4- A Ministry of Women should be founded.
5- We demand a new constitution that prioritises gender and sexual orientation equality. “
What elaborates even more on the lack of care for women in Turkey’s government is that in 2022, a legal case was opened by a court to close the leading violence against women organisation. In a statement, the platform said that the lawsuit accused the organisation of “acting against the law and morality”.
With a rare and hopeful result, the presiding Judge of the 13th Civil Court of First Instance in Istanbul dropped the case after four hearings stretching over 15 months. Cheers from the group members and supporters went up in Istanbul's main courthouse.
"This decision offers society a spark of hope about putting trust in the justice system," the campaign group's secretary general Fidan Ataselim told AFP.
However, despite the challenges, their efforts remain vital in shedding light on the alarming rise in women’s deaths. A lawyer for We Will Stop Femicides, Esin Izel Uysal, stated that the number of suspicious deaths rose by 82% between 2017 and 2023. In 2024, 65% of the perpetrators said that they had killed women because they had said they wanted to separate or refused to marry them.
As femicide rates continue to rise, the question remains: how many more women must die before meaningful action is taken? The international community must hold Turkey accountable, and governments worldwide must prioritize the protection of women’s rights. The fight against gender-based violence is not just Turkey’s battle—it is a global one. As Fidan Ataselim of ‘We Will Stop Femicides’ declared, “We will keep on fighting for women’s rights all over Turkey.” The question is: will the world join them?
