Turkey announces withdrawal from violence against women treaty

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Turkey announces withdrawal from violence against women treaty

Muskan Yadav | JURIST International Editor-at-Large

March 21, 2021 09:35:12 am

Turkey withdrew from the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, popularly known as the Istanbul Convention, by a presidential decree announced in the official gazette early Saturday.

The Istanbul Convention seeks to “protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence.” It is the first legally binding instrument in Europe to combat violence against women. Turkey was the first country to sign the convention the day it was launched in the city of Istanbul in 2011.

Femicides and domestic violence cases are on the rise in Turkey. While the country does not maintain official records of the number of violent crimes against women, according to We Will End Femicide Platform’s 2020 report, 300 femicides were committed and 171 women were found dead in suspicious circumstances during the year.

Responding to the announcement of the withdrawal, Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejčinović Burić stated, “This move is a huge setback to these efforts and all the more deplorable because it compromises the protection of women in Turkey, across Europe and beyond.”

The Women’s Coalition-Turkey, a women’s rights organization in Turkey, said in a press release, “By its decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention Turkey’s state government announces that it is giving up to protect women from all forms of violence. It is clear that this decision will further encourage the murderers of women, harassers, rapers.”

Members of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AK Parti and other conservatives lobbied against the convention last year, arguing that it encourages divorces and undermines family structures. Those in favor of withdrawal also argued that its principles of gender equality and non-discrimination on grounds of gender identity or sexual orientation encourage homosexuality, which has been legal in the country since 1858.

Vice President Fuat Oktay tweeted, “We are determined to carry our sincere struggle to raise the dignity of Turkish women in society to the levels they deserve, by preserving our traditional social fabric. For this sublime purpose, there is no need to look outside or imitate others. The solution is in our traditions and customs, in our essence.” Minister of Family, Labor and Social Services Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk issued a similar statement. She tweeted, “The guarantee of women’s rights is the current regulations in our domestic legislation, especially in our Constitution. Our legal system is dynamic and strong enough to implement new regulations according to need.”

Opposition leaders and some lawyers said Erdoğan cannot withdraw from a convention without parliamentary approval. Upon his reelection in 2018, Erdoğan acquired new executive powers. Minister of Justice Abdulhamit Gül tweeted, “The procedure for the approval and enforcement of international conventions is clear in our law. Parliament approves the participation, and the executive enforces it with a decision. The suspension and termination of the execution in the same way is under the authority of the executive.”

Thousands of individuals took to the streets in protest of the decision on Saturday, calling on Erdoğan to reverse his decision. Earlier this month he proposed a “human rights action plan.”

Poland, which announced its decision to withdraw from the convention in July of last year, is also set to do so in the coming months.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.