Erdogan came out to meet conservative and Islamist circles. They had called for the move on the grounds that the convention harms family unity and promotes divorce and homosexuality. Turkey’s highest administrative court on Tuesday rejected an application to cancel the exit. Erdogan has the “authority” to make this decision, the judges said.
Observers see Turkey’s exit from the Istanbul Convention as well as the official action against Pride marches as a clear sign of a creeping Islamization of Turkey under Erdogan. Human rights groups also regularly denounce the high number of murders of women in the country. According to the organization We Will Stop Femicide, 300 women were murdered in Turkey last year, and 189 so far this year.
“Nothing can spoil our mood and motivation,” said Canan Güllü, head of the Federation of Women’s Associations in Turkey. Victims of violence in Turkey are afraid and wonder “who will protect them”, said Güllü. If politicians at the state level no longer play along and do not implement the convention, they will turn to the regional governments. “You can’t ignore women, who make up 50 percent of the country’s population, and you can’t just close the window on human rights.” Protests are planned in many places on Thursday. A large rally in Istanbul was scheduled to start at 6:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. local time).
A passage of a planned judicial reform is currently causing unrest in the country. According to reports, this stipulates that, in order to prosecute sexual abuse, concrete evidence of the crime would have to be presented. This would make arrests for sex crimes impossible, according to women’s rights organizations.
According to Amnesty International (AI), withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention puts millions of Turkish women and girls at increased risk of violence.
