Since the beginning of the year, 299 women have been killed in Türkiye, which has a population of 85 million. In Istanbul, the country’s largest city, hundreds of people demonstrated on Saturday afternoon, according to an Agence France-Presse journalist.
Dressed in black like many of the protesters, Gunes Vadim Aksahin, one of the movement’s leaders, said, “You are a government that allows the killing of young girls.”
The protesters carried banners and pictures of two 19-year-old girls who were killed by one man in… Istanbul Thirty minutes apart on October 4th.
In turn, Gulizar Sezer, the mother of a young woman killed in Istanbul, said, “I want the slaughter of our daughters to stop.” Her daughter’s body was found in June after she was thrown into the sea wrapped in a carpet.
Groups of women also demonstrated on Saturday in the capital, Ankara, and in Izmir, the country’s third city, according to photos published by a feminist union.
The protesters demanded that Türkiye return to the agreement Council of Europe on combating violence against womenknown as the Istanbul Agreement, from which Ankara withdrew in 2021.
Protests have been continuing daily for a week, especially on university campuses.
The movement also extended to conservative cities, such as Urfa (southeast), where calls were made to demonstrate this weekend.
After considering that violence against women is caused by alcohol and social media, President Erdogan promised on Wednesday to tighten the law to combat the phenomenon.
