The Turkish organization “We Will Stop Femicide” campaigns against deadly violence against women. The public prosecutor’s office had called for it to be closed. An Istanbul court has now put a stop to this.
A court in Turkey has blocked attempts by the public prosecutor’s office to ban the leading women’s rights organization “We Will Stop Femicide”. “We are very happy, even if the trial should not have taken place in the first place,” a spokeswoman for the organization, Nursen Inal, told the AFP news agency after the Istanbul court’s decision.
Last year, the public prosecutor’s office called for the organization to be closed because of “violations of the law and morals.” The court hearings dragged on for over a year. The activists dismissed the lawsuit as politically motivated. They said they never learned what law they had allegedly violated.
Organization criticized withdrawal from Istanbul Convention
“We Will Stop Femicide” has been mobilizing against the widespread, often fatal violence against women in Turkey since 2010. Since its sharp criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision in 2021 to withdraw his country from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, the platform has increasingly become a target of Erdogan’s conservative Islamic AKP.
The convention obliges its member states to protect women from violence through laws and to take action against acts of violence. The Turkish government, however, said the convention promoted homosexuality and threatened traditional family values.