At least 29 women were killed in April alone as victims of gender-based violence in Turkey, according to reports from women’s rights and femicide prevention organisations, which point out that a total of 138 women were killed in the first four months of 2025.
As reported by Turkish media outlets, most of the victims were killed by men they had divorced or were in the process of divorcing. Last year alone, the KADES app (an app against gender-based violence created by the Turkish authorities) received nearly 1.4 million requests for help and reports, and some 920,000 women received assistance, underscoring the fact that gender-based violence remains one of the main problems facing women in Turkey.
Impunity for perpetrators of violence against women
This view is shared by Turkish lawyer Kardelen Yarlı, who told the press that she regretted that the current shortcomings in the judicial system are exploited by perpetrators to commit their crimes. Yarlı denounced the sense of impunity among perpetrators and the lack of enough protection measures for victims, two factors that she believes encourage gender-based violence.
For this lawyer, one of the biggest problems in curbing gender-based violence in Turkey is that most perpetrators or murderers of women know that even if they receive a prison sentence from a court, this does not mean that they will serve their entire sentence, even if they receive a life sentence. This is, in fact, what happened after the recent attack on the Turkish opposition leader, as amid public outrage it emerged that the detainee had been sentenced previously to life imprisonment in 2004 for murdering his children, but he was currently free because in 2020 a court granted him parole.
‘Unfortunately, under the current enforcement law, the sentence received in a criminal prison is not served,’ he lamented. ‘The attackers say, ‘What will happen to me, even if I am sentenced to 20 years? I won’t be there for 20 years, I’ll be there for 10… Or there will be an amnesty or they will pass a new law’. What happens when potential murderers of women have this perception of the legal system in Turkey? The deterrent and rehabilitative effect of the judicial system is eliminated,’ Yarlı denounced.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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