413 women killed across Turkey since start of 2015 according to media: Association

ISTANBUL - Doğan News Agency

Some 413 murders of women were reported by the Turkish media in 2015, the Umut (Hope) Foundation has stated in a new report, underlining that the trend has been increasing since the beginning of 2016.

The foundation called on Feb. 16 for NGOs to conduct comprehensive studies on the issue, which it described as a “mass murder of women.” 

It said the death toll ranged from women older than 85 to a six-week-old fetus. 

Of the 413 killings, 309 were a result of armed attacks, and 40 women have been killed since the beginning of January 2016 alone.

Most young women were killed because they requested a divorce or separation from their partners, the foundation noted, adding that many cases involved victims of “shady suicides,” mostly in southeastern provinces. In addition, data shows that 55 husbands committed suicide after killing their wives from the beginning of January 2015.


373 femicides after Özgecan Arslan murder


“One in three women is subjected to violence” the statement underlined. 

Some 373 cases of murders of women have been reported in the media since the brutal murder of Özgecan Arslan, a 20-year-old college student who was killed in the woods by a minibus driver who had attempted to rape her in the southern province of Mersin. The case stirred angry condemnations and protests across Turkey from women’s rights groups.

Istanbul has the highest number of murders of women, with 34, followed by the northwestern provinces of Kocaeli and Bursa.

The Aegean province of İzmir followed the Marmara region in the list. The Central Anatolian province of Ankara and the southeastern province of Gaziantep had 14 cases, Diyarbakır with 13 cases, and Mersin had 11 murders of women. However, obvious uncertainty remains over the reliability of reporting of women’s killings to the police and the media across Turkey.


Death toll increases with ‘shady suicides’

According to an earlier Human Rights Association (IHD) report on violations of women’s rights, some 109 women were killed in Turkey in 2015. The IHD also emphasized that murky cases of women’s suicides increase this number.

Recently, a local man in the southeastern province of Gaziantep disappeared after killing his wife, who had demanded a divorce, and eight other family members, using a pump-action rifle.