The wake-up call was hard for 23-year-old Selen.
“We heard the news on the networks, my roommate cried, we decided to come here to demonstrate.
After President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to withdraw Turkey from the Istanbul Convention, a treaty on combating violence against women, it only took a few hours for the student and thousands of others people demonstrate.
All converged this Saturday towards the square of the port of Kadikoy, on the Asian side of Istanbul, now colored by purple flags waving by the dozen.
The banners shout “Hands off my rights”, “Withdraw your decision, apply the Convention”, or even “We are not silent!
", Displaying some faces of the 300 victims of femicide counted last year (170 others having died" in suspicious conditions "), by the association We Will Stop Feminicide.
Women in Turkey gathered today to protest the government's pulling out from the Istanbul Convention (with a midnight Presidential decree).
If one wants to maintain hope (even a sliver) about the country look no further than women's movement and their resilience.
https://t.co/0yatrmTiXb
- Gulay Turkmen (@gulayturkmen) March 20, 2021
It was in this square that, seven months earlier, the same crowd had protested against the withdrawal plan as the numbers of femicides continue to increase year after year.
The movement had taken on a global scale via the hashtag #womensupportingwomen, under which women shared their black and white portraits, meaning that they too could be the victim of the next feminicide.
Even Sümeyye Erdogan, one of the Turkish president's daughters and a member of the conservative Kadem women's foundation, opposed the project.
The subject was wisely slipped under the carpet, before coming out again that night.
"With the Istanbul Convention, I at least hoped that this would change"
"I didn't think this would ever really happen," realizes, annoyed, Meltem, a protester with purple hair and sea green eyes.
“I am confronted with violence every day, in the bus, in the Vapur
(Editor's note: the boats that connect the Asian and European shores of the Bosphorus)
, at school, in my family.
If I go to the police, I know nothing will happen.
But with the Istanbul Convention, I at least had hope that this would change.
"
The Istanbul Convention, which Turkey was the first state to sign in 2011, is an international treaty aimed at providing a framework for the fight against violence against women, in particular by recognizing their gender nature.
If Turkish law has since adopted removal and protection measures, it remains very poorly applied, the victims being very often encouraged by the public authorities to "reconcile" with their attacker.
For Erdogan, the notion of "gender" would be a tool of the "LGBT lobby"
To improve respect for the law, feminist associations relied on the Istanbul Convention, until it entered the sights of the Islamo-conservative government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last summer.
The latter considers for his part that the notion of "gender" would be a tool of the "LGBT lobby" and would harm Turkey's "traditional" values.
“This kind of backlash
(Editor's note: backlash)
was on the agenda of power.
According to them, it is necessary to preserve the family unit rather than the rights and freedoms of women ”, attests Leyla Soydinc, voluntary social worker of the Mor Çati association, which offers psychological, legal and logistical support to victims of violence.
"The government claims to protect family values ... While it is precisely the family that kills women in Turkey, it is their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, their boyfriends," exclaims Ebru, one of the members of the 'We Will Stop Feminicide association.
They expect us to stay at home, because they are afraid of modern women ”.
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If President Erdogan plans to set up new legislative measures more suited to his vision of society, Selen remains pessimistic.
“These are all lies.
Each time, Erdogan speaks, but there is no change, it only gets worse.
His new law will not be fair, he has no respect for women, transsexuals or homosexuals.
For him, only men are the strongest.
"