While violence against women and femicides are increasing daily in Turkey, the AKP/MHP government wants to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention on the Prevention of Violence. Throughout the country, however, women have been taking to the streets for weeks. Zeynep Üren is an activist in the Free Women's Movement (TJA) and has spoken to ANF on the subject.

Üren pointed out that feminicides can still take place because the Istanbul Convention is not being implemented, saying: “Instead of preventing violence, the state is attacking the women's movement. Any attack on women is political. In Turkey, women are not protected and they are not allowed to defend themselves. Murderers of women receive their power from the government. The government protects the murderers. The attacks on women serve to keep the government in power. With newly enacted laws, women are made dependent on men and the state. Men take over the role of the state in the family. In this way the state is also present in the domestic environment."

Women must defend themselves

The TJA activist remarked that the state is attacking the achievements of the women's movement everywhere: "If the women's movement does not grow stronger, women will be affected by violence everywhere. The state is pursuing a deliberate strategy. Violence against women has always existed. At least one woman has been murdered every day since the debate on withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention began. Women affected by violence are left alone.”

Üren continued: “Sexual assault and rape have become a strategy in the government's special war. Violence against women is based on a state policy. Rape has been used as a means of warfare for years. There are many examples of this in Turkey. We recently experienced this in Şırnak and Batman. The voices of women are getting louder every day, but if the perpetrator is a civil servant, he is protected. If he even wears a uniform, all the mechanisms of law enforcement are switched off. There is no open door for women who are raped or abused by state forces to turn to."

Istanbul Convention has never been implemented

Commenting on the debate about the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, Zeynep Üren said: "The government is not at all concerned about protecting women. It doesn't want equal rights anyway. Women should always remain dependent on their families, according to them. The Istanbul Convention has not yet been applied in practice, and now it is wanted to be abolished altogether. This Convention is not so much a legal matter as an ideological issue. The government and state want to tear down everything that stands in the way of their own ideology. One of those obstacles is the Istanbul Convention."