Seven women were killed by their spouse or ex-spouse in a single day Tuesday across Turkey, according to a census compiled by private television Haber Türk.
“A total of seven women were brutally murdered in Izmir, Bursa, Sakarya, Erzurum, Denizli and Istanbul,” reports the television channel, listing major cities in the country located as well in the West as Istanbul, the economic capital, Bursa or Izmir, on the Aegean coast, than in Sakarya (north) or Erzurum, in eastern Anatolia, reputed to be more conservative.
By bullets or knives
“The suspects were either their current spouses or spouses from whom they were separated,” specifies Haber Türk, which cites the names of the victims and displays their photo for each of them on its website.
Bugün 6 kentten kadın cinayeti haberi geldi
İzmir, Bursa, Sakarya, Erzurum, Denizli ve İstanbul'da toplam 7 kadın öldürüldü.
Zanlılar ya şu anki ya da ayrıldıkları eşleriydi https://t.co/eBTTni070B pic.twitter.com/QUPhMM1sSS
— Habertürk (@Haberturk) February 27, 2024
These women, aged 32 to 49, were killed by bullets or stabbings;
at least three of the murderers ended their lives, two were arrested, another injured during his arrest died.
The fate of the seventh, who escaped from prison to kill his wife, was not specified.
315 murders in 2023
In 2023, the women's rights defense platform "We Will stop feminicides" recorded 315 murders of women - 65% of whom were killed in their homes - and 248 "suspicious deaths", described as "suicides" by the authorities but that the feminists attribute it to a third, noting the suspicious increase in defenestrations in Turkey.
Conversely, the NGOs point out, “in fifteen years the only year where the number of feminicides decreased was 2011, the year when the Istanbul Convention was adopted”.
The country withdrew in 2021 from the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, known as the Istanbul Convention, which requires authorities to investigate and punish violence against women.
A procedure initiated in 2022 against the “We will stop feminicides” platform by an Istanbul prosecutor, aiming to ban it for “immoral activities”, was finally abandoned in September.