Turkish police detained dozens in Istanbul on Monday after protestors took to the streets rallying for stronger protections for women, local media reported.
In honor of the hundreds of women killed in Turkey each year, the march continued despite a ban on public assembly on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
To enforce the ban, law enforcement shut down metro stations, barricaded Istiklal, the city’s main pedestrian street, and closed Taksim Square, a major thoroughfare and historically significant venue for large-scale political protests.
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Protesters blamed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for contributing to a backslide in women’s protections, highlighting his 2021 decision to withdraw the country from the Istanbul Convention, a European treaty designed to combat violence against women of which Turkey was one of the first signatories.
Erdogan, who heads the right-wing nationalist Justice and Development Party (AKP), has defended the withdrawal, arguing that Turkish laws are sufficient to protect women and that the convention promotes LGBTQ+ rights and values incompatible with Turkish values.
Speaking at an event promoting women’s rights on Monday, Erdogan called violence against women “a betrayal of humanity” but rejected renewed calls for Turkey to rejoin the treaty as “an ideological quarrel” with “no basis.”
Erdogan has held power in Ankara for more than 20 years and has increasingly relied on a socially conservative Islamist base to maintain it.
While the World Economic Forum ranked Turkey 129th out of 146 nations in its 2023 Gender Inequality Index, the last two years have seen a notable increase in Turkish women’s political involvement, including in nationwide municipal elections earlier this year [3], which saw the number of female mayors go from 4 to 11.