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Abstract
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On March 20, 2021, the Turkish government officially announced Turkey's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. This comes at a time when gender-based violence, including femicide, has been on the rise in the country and continues to be an everyday crisis.
The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence is the first legally binding human rights treaty that created a comprehensive legal framework and approach to combat gender-based violence, sexist hate speech, gender stereotypes, and sexism. The agreement urges countries to establish equal rights for women residents and enact legislation to prevent gender-based violence. It was opened for signature on May 11, 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey, and is therefore internationally known as the Istanbul Convention. Furthermore, Turkey was the first country to sign the Istanbul Convention. To date, it has been signed by 45 countries and the European Union. Turkey was the first country to ratify the convention on March 12, 2012, followed by 33 countries between 2013 and 2019.
Some member countries of the Council of Europe have signed but not ratified it and then rejected the convention. The first rejection came from the Constitutional Court of Bulgaria in 2018. In 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations highlighted what it called a "shadow pandemic": a silent intensification of violence against women and girls occurring globally. Some other European countries have followed Bulgaria in rejecting the Istanbul Convention. The National Council of Slovakia rejected it by claiming that the convention, through its extreme liberalism, might corrode traditional values, and they wanted them to be protected. The National Assembly of Hungary declared that it would not go any further in acceding to the convention. The Polish Government was the first to reject the convention after ratifying it and criticized the convention for its statement that "culture, custom, religion, tradition, or so-called 'honor' shall not be regarded as justification" for acts of gender-based violence.
In the same year, in my home country of Turkey, some people began petitioning for the country to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, claiming it encouraged divorce and immoral lifestyles. Turkish women and human rights advocates called upon the government to uphold the legislation and to properly implement laws to prevent increases in gender-based violence and femicide. Along with protests across the country, social media campaigns supporting the Istanbul Convention have emerged, making a global plea for justice for women killed and for increased awareness of gender-based violence. However, and despite these valiant efforts, the Turkish government finally announced its official withdrawal, claiming that though the Istanbul Convention had originally been intended to promote women's rights, it was then used to normalize homosexuality, which is incompatible with Turkey's social and family values...
Language: en |