US President Joe Biden on Sunday forcefully condemned Turkey’s “deeply disappointing” decision to pull out from a landmark European convention aimed at protecting women.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a presidential decree on Saturday announcing the withdrawal from the 2011 Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. Turkey, which was the first country to ratify the treaty, is now the first of 35 signatories to abandon it.

“Countries should be working to strengthen and renew their commitments to ending violence against women, not rejecting international treaties designed to protect women and hold abusers accountable,” Biden said of the convention named for Turkey’s biggest city. “This is a disheartening step backward for the international movement to end violence against women globally.”

Biden also noted reports in Turkey of rising femicide, which is defined as killing women and girls because of their gender. At least 474 women in the country were murdered in 2019, many for wanting a divorce, according to We Will Stop Femicide. The Istanbul-based group says most of the murders were committed by current or former partners, relatives or men whose advances the women rejected.