Erdogan brings Turkey back to the dark ages.. How did the government ignore women’s rights laws?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has plunged Turkey back into decades of darkness after the government ignored laws protecting women.
Observers believe that Turkey’s return to the Ottoman era is not limited to foreign policies. Erdogan seeks to marginalize women and suppress their rights by withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention for the Protection of Women from Violence.
Weak laws
Hulya Gulbahar, a women’s rights activist and lawyer, told Turkey’s Birgun that the measures taken by the Turkish government to combat violence against women are not enough and that laws should be better implemented.
On Friday, the Turkish Interior Ministry announced that a circular on the 2022 Action Plan to Combat Violence against Women had been sent to all 81 provinces.
However, many generalizations had been issued over the years, with little change in violence against women and their killing.
Gulbahar said the first laws to protect women from male violence were enacted in 1998. The current Law No. 6284 on the Protection of the Family and the Prevention of Violence against Women had last been updated in 2012.
“This is an admission that we are facing the Ministry of Interior, which has not trained its employees on how to intervene in cases of violence since 1998, and has not issued the necessary documents in this regard”, she said. “The ministry has not decided how to intervene since 1998”.
Action plan
According to the Turkish website Ahval, the action plan includes five main goals and 28 secondary goals, with 110 elements to measure performance.
It expects at least 10 new women’s shelters for municipalities with a population of over 100,000, training programs for 5 million men as part of the Domestic Violence Prevention Program, and efforts to inform foreigners living in Turkey about the legal framework and their rights.
It also includes 500 surveillance devices as a new tool for use in round-the-clock surveillance and the publication of a manual on how to intervene and manage risks in violent situations.
“When they say they will open 10 new municipal shelters for women, they admit to ignoring the law”, Gulbahar said. According to the current law, it is necessary for municipalities to have shelters for women.
There are currently 35 municipal shelters for women in Turkey, which includes 81 provinces.
If they want to implement a circular, they don’t need a new publication. They can only implement the 2006 circular entitled Measures to Prevent Violence against Women and Children and Honor Killings, signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself.
“The generalization that mentioned equality and equal representation is ignored in the government, and new circulars were invented without mentioning equality, which is the real antidote to violence”, she said.
Turkish regression
Turkey withdrew from the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, in July 2012 through a presidential decree signed by Erdogan.
“The Istanbul Convention obliges potential victims to be informed when a suspect is released from custody, and this cannot be explained in new versions of the laws”, said a human rights activist.
Police stations specializing in violence against women, as defined in the Action Plan, would make it difficult for women to obtain support when they needed it.
At least 96 women were killed in Turkey in the first three months of 2022, according to Counter Monument, a project by women’s rights groups where the number of killings of women is monitored, throughout 2021, with at least 419 women killed by men.
