Women under Erdogan between murder and repression.. 6732 killed since the Justice and Development Party’s arrival of the Prime Minister.. Turkish president breaks promises

Turkey’s opposition lawmaker Szegin Tanrikulu prepared a report on Sunday that a total of 6,732 women have been killed in 18 years since the Justice and Development Party came to power in Turkey.

The report, which was prepared by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Tanrikulu for International Women’s Day, entitled Women’s Rights Violations in Turkey, added that there are 800 children living in prisons alongside their mothers.

Tanrikulu found that there are 17,000 women in prison in general, 3,000 minors, and at the same time, women’s shelters in Turkey do not have enough space for up to 10% of the country’s female population, and there are currently 3,482 sites in all shelters in Turkey, including occupied and vacant shelters.

Tanrikulu said in the report: “Work on eliminating violence against women is extremely weak in Turkey, as evidenced by legitimizing male violence by commuting and postponing judgments.”

The report also found a gender wage gap of more than 31% in Turkey, while men who have business account for 77.3% more than their female counterparts.

At least 408 women were killed in Turkey in 2020, and since January 1 of this year, 67 more deaths have been killed, and these figures are based on media reports and other public information because the Ministry of Family and the Ministry of Interior does not report female homicide statistics.

The AKP won its first election in November 2002, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to improve the status of women in the country since then, though much has not been reflected in concrete data.

Groups of Erdogan’s supporters have called on Turkey to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, the generic name of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Fighting Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, which the Turkish president said he was thinking about.

Erdoğan’s daughter, Somaya Erdoğan, was among those who opposed a full withdrawal from the Istanbul agreement, which Tanrikulu believes should be better implemented.

On Saturday, Turkish women’s rights group We Will Stop Femics Platform organized demonstrations in several provinces on Friday, ahead of planned weekend protests for International Women’s Day.

The Turkish Women’s Rights Group and women’s associations met in 10 provinces, including Istanbul and the capital city of Ankara, as well as Izmir, Eski Shahir, Manisa, Urdu, Kayseri, Marmarmarmaris, Tokat and Kastamonu.

Yesterday’s demonstrations focused on reducing sentences and impunity for crimes of murder of women, in addition to suspicious deaths that were not added to the total number of women killed in the country, and recorded 408 murders in 2020.

Another 171 women died in suspicious circumstances last year, said Milik Onder of the Women’s Rights Group of Turkey for the Medicascope news platform. Domestic violence has increased under the MERS pandemic last year, while all other crimes have dropped, she said.