Femicide

Women in masks hold placards and shout slogans during a rally against violence against women in Istanbul, August 5, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/ERDEM SAHIN

"The presidential decision on the annulment of the treaty did not comply with the law," Mucukgil said in a court case, the daily Cumhuriyet reported.

At least 28 women have lost their lives in two years under suspicious circumstances after falling to the ground from a height, in what many fears could be examples of femicide.

The women have plunged to their deaths from a balcony or window, raising eyebrows of many women's rights groups on whether these were femicide framed as "suicides" or "accidents."

The women's football teams of Turkish giants Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe have faced each other for the first time in history within the scope of the United Nations' "Orange the World" campaign to protest femicides and violence against women in Istanbul late on Dec. 7.

After another murder of a woman in Croatia by her former partner, human rights activists have urged the government to take a more serious approach to violence prevention and protection of women - and classify femicides as premediated murders connected with hate crimes towards women.

A British-made documentary about pervasive gender-based violence in Turkey has been selected as the United Kingdom's Oscar nominee for the 94th Academy Awards, to be held in March in Los Angeles.

Directed by Chloe Fairweather, "Dying to Divorce" has been selected to represent Britain at the Oscars as the official entry in the Best International Feature Film category.

Turkish police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse women protesters who marched on Thursday night to mark International Day for the Elimination Violence Against Women.

"We are not silenced, we do not fear and we do not obey," the women chanted together in the streets of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Mersin and other cities and towns.

Turkey has witnessed some 251 femicides in a year as of Nov. 15, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has said in a video-conference meeting with governors of all 81 provinces.

"The number of femicides in the whole of 2020 was 268. It seems that the number [of femicides] in 2021 will surpass that of last year," Soylu noted.

Violence against women and femicide continue to be major problems in Turkey, with worrying statistics and daily updated death tolls showing that current preventive measures are far from sufficient.

İYİ (Good) Party leader Meral Akşener on Nov. 17 pledged to make necessary legislation in the fight against femicide and violence against women if her party comes to power.

Speaking at her party's parliamentary group meeting, Akşener recalled a recent femicide in which yet another woman was brutally murdered by a man while walking on a street in Istanbul.

A man who killed a 28-year-old woman in Istanbul's Ataşehir district with a Samurai sword has confessed in his statement to the police that he targeted the woman on the street arbitrarily because he thought she was "defenseless."