Thousands of women against Erdogan over exit from pact against gender-based violence

Thousands of women demonstrated Saturday in Turkey against the Islamist government's decision to pull the country out of the Istanbul Convention, a European treaty against male violence that the Turkish government and its President Recep Tayip Erdogan was one of the first to sign ten years ago.

UN Women on Saturday called on the Turkish government to reconsider its withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, a pan-European treaty to prevent violence against women signed by 45 countries.

Turkey was among the group of 14 pioneering states, including Spain, that signed the Council of Europe's Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence in Istanbul in May of this year.

The Eurasian country, which according to its critics has never implemented the convention, thus becomes the first state to abandon the treaty, after having been, paradoxically, the first to ratify it.

The largest demonstration took place in Istanbul, the city where in May 2011 fourteen Council of Europe member states, including Turkey, were the first to sign the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women.

At least 284 women were murdered in Turkey in 2020 and 78 so far this year in crimes against women, according to estimates by Bianet, an NGO that has been collecting such cases for a decade in the absence of official figures.

The feminist platform "Stop Women Murders" raises that figure to 300 and adds another 171 cases of women killed in suspicious circumstances.

Thousands of women, but also many young men, gathered in Kadiköy in the Asian part of the city, surrounded by heavy security, including police in riot gear.

Slogans such as "Women want justice" and "Long live the Istanbul Convention" were chanted by the demonstrators, who also recited the names of women victims of feminicide. "Vive", chanted the demonstrators after each name.

"Whenever there is a crisis, women are the first to suffer. But we will not give up and we will continue to fight for our rights," one of the demonstrators, who preferred not to identify herself, told Efe.
Islamist pressures

The decision to pull Turkey out of the Convention was made in a decree signed by the country's Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and published on Saturday in the official gazette.

"Under the leadership of our president, we continue our struggle with determination for women to participate more in social, economic, political and cultural life," Fahrettin Altun, spokesperson for the Turkish presidency, said after the announcement.

With Erdogan as prime minister, Turkey was the first country to ratify the pact, in March 2012, although several women's groups denounce that it has never been applied in practice.

"We do not recognise the decision of a single man", "Women, life, freedom" or "Feminicides are political" were other messages chanted at the protest in Istanbul, which also included members of the LGBTI community, who consider this measure to be an attack on other sexual orientations.

Erdogan had already threatened in August 2020 to withdraw the country from the agreement "if the people want it".

Many experts believe that conservative Islamist groups have pressured Erdogan's party, the AKP, for this withdrawal, considering that some articles have a negative impact on "the family structure" and go against "national values".

They claim that the text promotes homosexuality, by using the term "sexual orientation", and attacks family values, by describing the relationships of "people living together" without specifying whether they are married.

However, some AKP members last year argued against leaving the agreement, including some female MPs and KADEM, a women's organisation close to the party and whose deputy head is Erdogan's daughter Sümeyye Erdogan.

Others in the party argue that Turkey has its own laws and "traditions" to protect women from male violence.

"The solution is in our customs and traditions, it is in our essence," Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Twitter today.

Some constitutional law experts and the main opposition party, the social democratic CHP, have raised doubts that a presidential decree has the legal power to pull the country out of an international agreement.

Indeed, the CHP has announced that it will take the case to the Supreme Administrative Court.

Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic on Saturday called Turkey's withdrawal from the agreement "devastating".

The Istanbul Convention, which is applied in 34 of the Council of Europe's 47 partner countries, is "a precious tool in international efforts to protect women and girls from the violence they face on a daily basis in our societies," Pejcinovic said in a statement.

Russia and Azerbaijan are the only countries in that group that have neither signed nor ratified the pact.

UN Women on Saturday called on the Turkish government to reconsider its withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, a pan-European treaty to prevent violence against women signed by 45 countries.

For the organisation, the Turkish authorities' decision comes "at a time when common action and commitment to end violence against women and girls is more important than ever and when UN Women seeks to mobilise even greater multi-stakeholder and multi-generational action".

"We join those urging the Government of the Republic of Turkey to continue to protect and promote the safety and rights of all women and girls, and to remain committed to the full implementation of the Istanbul Convention," UN Women stresses in a statement. 

"The solidarity of nations that comes from being party to international conventions is essential for a world free of the 'shadow pandemic' of violence against women," UN Women insists in its statement, after stressing that the confinements and crises caused by the pandemic have led to an increase in violence against women and girls.