Femicide in Turkey is murders in which women are killed for reasons related to their social roles, such as being killed on the grounds of "honor cleansing".
It is one of the acts of violence against women in Turkey. The number of femicides has increased significantly in Turkey in the 2000s, compared to previous years. In 2019 alone, 474 women were killed. It was the year in which the most women were killed in the country in the last 10 years. According to the annual report of the "We Will Stop Femicide Platform", 300 women were murdered by men in 2020, and 171 women were found suspiciously dead. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of femicides decreased only in 2011, the year the Istanbul Convention was signed.
Among the main justifications put forward by criminals to normalize their crimes are; women's demand for separation, honor, deception, jealousy, and more.
Statistics
There are different data on femicide in Turkey published by official institutions and women's organizations. Since statistics on the number of women killed by their partners or family members in Turkey are not shared by relevant government agencies, official data is considered insufficient to reflect the extent of the femicide problem.
Civil organizations that started collecting data on femicide in Turkey are Anıt Sayaç, Bianet and We Will Stop Femicide Platform.
Femicide statistics according to some official data
The response of the then Minister of Justice, Sadullah Ergin, to a parliamentary question in 2009 is considered to be an important piece of official data on femicide in Turkey. In this response, the number of femicides committed in the country between 2002 and 2008 was explained as being 66 in 2002, 83 in 2003, 128 in 2004, 317 in 2005, 663 in 2006, 1011 in 2007, and 806 in 2008. The 14-fold increase in femicides from the years 2002 to 2008 was widely discussed in the media and among politicians.
In the answer given by the Ministry of Family and Social Policies to another parliamentary question asked in 2013, it was reported that 171 murders of women were committed in 2009, 177 in 2010, 163 in 2011 and 128 in the first 9 months of 2012.
In January 2021, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced on his Twitter account that the number of women who lost their lives in femicides within the scope of Law No. 6284 was 353 in 2017, 279 in 2018, 336 in 2019 and 266 in 2020.
Femicide statistics by years
According to the data of the "We Will Stop Femicide Platform" (KCDP), 80 in 2008, 109 in 2009, 180 in 2010, 121 in 2011, 210 in 2012, 237 in 2013, 294 in 2014, 303 in 2015, 328 in 2016, 409 in 2017, 440 in 2018, and 474 in 2019, adding up to a total of 3,185 women were killed between 2008 and 2019.
According to the 2019 report of the "We Will Stop Femicide Platform", 115 of the 474 femicides committed in 2019 were recorded as suspicious and the culprits could not be found. According to the 2020 report, 300 women were killed by men in Turkey in 2020 and 171 women were found suspiciously dead.
The table shows the number of deaths by years and the data of the "We Will Stop Femicide Platform", shared on the website Anıt Sayaç, made for women who have died of violence in Turkey, is as follows:
Femicide statistics by perpetrator
A study examining 1,260 femicide cases that took place between 2008 and 2018, shows that the husband of the murdered woman is at the top of the list of perpetrators in femicides (623). Murders by lovers (160) take the second place and ex-husband murders (94) take the third place. The fourth rank is "murders committed by an acquaintance" (88), with cases of theft and rape. This is followed by murders of relatives (49), murder by brother (48), murder by son (48), murder by father (38), and murder by a stranger (18).
Of the women murdered in 2019, 134 were by their spouses, 51 by their husbands, 29 by their relatives, 25 by their ex-husband, 25 by their son, neighbor or parents at the same school as their child, 8 by their former partner, 19 by acquaintances, 15 by their father, 13 by their brother, and 3 by people the women did not know.