Status: 05/26/2022 06:00 a.m
Despite court orders to stay away from them, several men in Turkey have murdered their ex-partners. A Human Rights Watch report shows government failure to protect women.
In June last year, the Turk Esref A. shot his 38-year-old wife Yemen dead in front of her house in the central Anatolian city of Aksaray, according to a report by the Turkey office of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch. Courts had previously ordered A. to keep his distance from his wife four times after he repeatedly molested her in the course of divorce proceedings.
A lawyer for the victim’s family told the human rights organization that A. continued to visit and threaten his wife after the third and fourth court orders. However, the court did not draw any consequences – such as short-term detention – because, according to the court, there was no evidence of the disregard of the order and the threat.
This is just one of several cases in which the human rights organization believes that the Turkish state has failed to protect women from their tormentors and thus prevent the foreseeable excess of violence.
Husbands, divorced men, former partners
An 86-page report entitled “Tackling Domestic Violence in Turkey – The Deadly Consequence of Lack of Protection” shows how husbands, divorced men or ex-partners harass or attack Turkish women despite a court order that should stop them.
The cases were investigated in the wake of Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan justified the exit by saying, among other things, that Turkey had sufficient laws to curb violence against women.
While police and courts in Turkey have responded to women’s domestic violence complaints with correspondingly stricter orders, failure to enforce the orders leaves a dangerous gap in the protections of the complainants, said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director at Human Rights Watch.
The non-implementation of the orders means that women who are actually “on the radar of the authorities are murdered by their tormentors or are subjected to repeated assaults for years.”
Authorities knew risk
Human Rights Watch interviewed victims, their lawyers, police officers, judges, and prosecutors in 18 domestic violence cases. In six cases, according to the human rights organization, the women were murdered even though the authorities knew that those affected were at considerable risk.
Violations of court orders requiring abusers to keep their distance from victims are not recorded in the relevant files, Human Rights Watch said.
Merzuka Altunsögüt, a victim of domestic violence, complains that she was given an order by the court to prevent her ex-husband from getting too close to her. He would not show up again, she had been assured. But the following day she came home from work and he waited for her at the door again.
In various cases, only an interview with the Turkish media led to the police or the courts demanding compliance with the orders more emphatically. Many of those affected or their family members would use social media to draw attention to the cases.
Ministries do not want to comment
Human Rights Watch has contacted the Turkish Ministry of Justice and the Turkish Ministry of Family Affairs for comment, but has received no response. In the six murders investigated, all perpetrators were convicted and punished.
The fact that it was clear in the run-up to the killings that the perpetrators were repeatedly disobeying court orders and that the authorities had taken no action to enforce the orders, for example through temporary detention, has so far not been worth investigating, the human rights organization said.