ANKARA (Middle East Eye) – A legal case has been opened by a court to close down one of Turkey’s leading organizations, which has campaigned for years against the murder of women in the country.
In a statement on Wednesday, the We Will Stop Femicide Platform said that the lawsuit, which was filed by the Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office, accuses the organization of “acting against the law and morality”.
Since its founding in 2010, the organization has campaigned against what it sees as an epidemic of violence against women in Turkey. The group has, in recent years, been heavily involved in bringing a number of murders, suspicious killings and disappearances of women to both national and international attention.
It has also collated annual data on the killing of women, revealing hundreds of murders per year. In its latest report, the group said there had been 24 murders of women in Turkey in March 2022.
“We know that we will never walk alone in the face of these attacks against our just struggle,” read the statement.
We Will Stop Femicide Platform said the lawsuit was based on various complaints against the group, including accusations that it had “disintegrated the family structure by ignoring the concept of family”, which the court said had created a “strong suspicion” of criminal activity.
There has been widespread anger in Turkey since July 2021, when - in the middle of a highly publicized wave of violent female deaths - the government withdrew Turkey from the 2011 Istanbul Convention on the prevention of violence against women.