Women's organizations fear a wave of 'femicide' in Turkey

Photo: unknown photomontage

Lucas Farioli / Estambul

The Women and Ethic Commission of the Turkish Physicians’ Chamber said in a press conference last Saturday in order to prevent the killing of women in Turkey,
-Where it is estimated that three women are killed every day- the state needs to provide more instruments to de dominant mechanism, which aim at assisting and protecting the women, such as the judiciary or medical services.
At this respect several women’s organization have demanded from the government an “urgent plan of action” to stop the “increasing cases of femicide in Turkey.”
Müge Yetener, women’s organization activist and a member of the chamber alleged that between January and August, last year 953 women and this year 226 women were murdered, conservative Turkish paper Zaman said.
According to Turkish information wire Bianet News in October of this year 23 women were killed and 16 wounded. Also in October 15 women were raped and 7 of them were under eighteen.
According to several women’s organization the reasons behind the killings are diverse: wearing “provocative” clothes, sending a text message, or simply for jealously.
Pinar Illkaracak, member the Turkish women’s right organization of Women for Women Human Rights has said that “honour crime” is on the rise.
“There are two main types of murder against women, one is domestic violence against wife or girlfriend which happens in everywhere, and the other is honour killing which unfortunately is on the rise”, Illkaracak said.
“Our organization and several 14 other women’s right movements have initiated a tremendously vigorous campaign in order to rise the attention of the public and authorities about this issue”
“We have persuaded the authorities to modify 14 articles over the current legislation, making imprisonment sentences much tougher for those guilty of honour crimes family plotting, however there is still a lot of things to improve in terms of women’s right and equality in Turkey”
For a long time, women’s organizations have demanded more shelters, claiming that for every 7500 people there must be at least one women’s shelter house
Meanwhile, in an interview with Turkish paper Zaman, Meltem Agduk from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), argued that Turkey has been making some progress in this topic but there is more work to do:
“We believe that Turkey has been working on the honour crimes, early-age marriages and human trafficking that there is still a long way to go”
According to Illkaracak the passiveness of the cabinet is due to political reasons.
“The fact that current AKP Islamism rulers prefer not to deal with this problematic is not because of their religious background, as Quran disapprove this practice; it is due to the value of conservative Kurdish vote, in whose regions most of honour killing are being committed. This is simply unacceptable”
Meanwhile the construction of seven new shelters the UNFPA coordinated the EU and the Turkish Ministry of Interior have already been completed and hanged over this weekend in cities such as Ankara, Antalya, Bursa, Eskisehir, Gaziantep, Izmir and Samsun.