ISTANBUL, Turkey — A prominent Turkish anti-femicide campaign group went on trial on
Wednesday accused of activity against law and morals, with several hundred
women rallying outside
Istanbul’s main court in protest.
اضافة اعلان
Prosecutors had
filed a lawsuit in April against We Will Stop Femicide Platform, one of the
country’s leading feminist organizations. If convicted, the group could be shut
down.
Protesters outside
the court waved banners bearing slogans such as “You will never walk alone!”
and “We will stop women’s murders”, alongside the families of women murdered by
men.
We Will Stop Femicide Platform has been campaigning against the murder and abuse of women
since its foundation in 2010.
Group
representative Nursen Inal slammed the trial, saying it was politically
motivated.
“We believe this
court case is an attack against women’s struggle for their rights,” she told
AFP.
The hearing
adjourned on Wednesday and will resume on October 5.
‘Under pressure’
The association was a vocal critic of
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
decision last year to pull Turkey out of the Istanbul Convention, which
requires countries to set up laws aimed at preventing and prosecuting violence
against women.
Social
conservatives in Turkey claim the convention promotes homosexuality and
threatens traditional family values.
We Will Stop
Femicide Platform says 160 women have been killed in Turkey this year and 423
in 2021, with many murders committed by family members.
“We are under
pressure from the government because we publicize, name by name, each and every
woman’s murder,” Inal said.
“This contradicts
the government’s thesis which says women’s murder is on the decline.”
In April alone, 24
women were murdered, the group said — adding that 16 others had died in
suspicious circumstances, even though some of these deaths were officially
registered as suicide.
We Will Stop
Femicide Platform’s secretary-general Fidan Ataselim told the court on
Wednesday that the group kept a record of femicides because official data is
hard to access.
“Nobody is talking
about women’s suspicious deaths. There is an increase in femicide under the
pretext of suicide. We will shed light on covered up murders,” she said.
‘Unlawful, dangerous’
Ipek Bozkurt, lawyer for We Will Stop Femicide Platform, said femicides
were “political” — and so was the lawsuit.
“This is a move
against the platform which strongly condemned the withdrawal from the Istanbul
convention. Therefore in our defence, we will explain to the judges why this
case lacks legal grounds,” she said.
Almost 300 lawyers
from across Turkey expressed an interest in defending the group.
Aysun Kilic, from
the bar association in the northwestern province of Kocaeli, said We Will Stop
Femicide was conducting a careful, up-to-date study about murdered women.
“This is actually
the duty of the state,” she told AFP.
“While this is the
case, we find the lawsuit unlawful, dangerous for women’s rights, and an
attempt to undermine a study on women’s killings. This case is harming us and
our fight for women’s rights,” she said.
Melek Onder,
another spokesperson of the group, remained defiant. “This legal action
empowers us rather than weakens us,” she told AFP.
“It’s impossible to
shut down this platform when women are still becoming victims of femicide,” she
said.
“We are not desperate at all because we know that they
cannot stop our struggle.”
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