Government policies against women protested in Istanbul

Duvar English

As per the call of Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP), women on Oct. 15 gathered in Istanbul’s Kadıköy district for the “Women's Meeting of Stubbornness, Hope and Freedom” to protest the government policies and discourse against women. The slogan of “We still have the stubbornness and hope to change this order in which we are oppressed and exploited more and more every day,” was used for the meeting.

Speaking at the meeting, TİP Spokesperson and lawmaker Sera Kadıgil said “The mentality that has settled over our country is no less than Israel in terms of fascism and Hamas in terms of misogyny. Yes, we are faced with a misogynist regime, by all accounts. The number of girls giving birth during the AKP rule reached 2 million.”

“We women do not have to support either Israel or Hamas. We support Palestine, which has been struggling for 60 years. We are against the hypocrisy that remains silent while civilians are being bombed in Rojava,” she said, according to reporting from online news outlet T24.

Kadıgil also said the number of girls who were married by applying to the court despite being underage reached 130,000 in the last decade. “That's exactly why we're here today. We are here for the girls living in this country.”

Turkey has made moves in recent years to lessen protections for women. In July 2021, the country formally withdrew from the Istanbul Convention (the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence), a move that advocacy groups say was a major setback for women in the country. Turkey was the first country to sign the Convention back in 2011.

Some 334 women were murdered by men in 2022, while 245 women were found dead under suspicious circumstances over the same period, according to the We Will Stop Femicides Platform.