Women in Turkey report 30,000 cases of violence in two years

Duvar English

The emergency report button for violence against women on Turkey's Women Support Application (KADES) was pressed some 30,000 times in the past two years, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Istanbul deputy Gamze Akkuş İlgezdi said on July 20.

Reporting responses she got to a set of parliamentary questions she presented about the state-run KADES mobile application, İlgezdi said that the app had gained 453, 012 downloads in the two years it's been available, and that 30,601 women had reported emergencies through it.

"Each day, 38 women reported being subjected to violence through the app. These are merely the women who had access to a smart phone and this application," İlgezdi said.

"The real data is much more overwhelming and portrays a much more devastating picture."

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The deputy said that the government wasn't taking harsh enough measures against violence against women, noting the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) appeals to the Istanbul Convention, officially the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

AKP Deputy Chair Numan Kurtulmuş said in early July that it was “wrong” of Turkey to ratify the Istanbul Convention and signaled that the government might withdraw from the convention.

The deputy contrasted AKP officials' comments to the data from KADES that revealed some 6,822 women had reported being subjected to violence in the first nine months of its launch.

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