Rights group spotlighting murder of women in Turkey faces legal threat
A lawsuit threatens to silence Turkey's main voice on violence against women, the We Will Stop Femicides Platform.
Turkey’s most prominent women’s rights group is facing a legal fight for survival after prosecutors demanded its closure for acting “against morality” and undermining the “family structure.”
The We Will Stop Femicides Platform has battled for 12 years to highlight high levels of violence against women in Turkey and what it says is official ambivalence to the murder of women.
The group has been served with a lawsuit demanding its closure for “acting against the law and morality,” it said in a statement Wednesday. The case is built on complaints “that are not based on any concrete facts,” it read. They include the claim that the group “tears down the family structure by ignoring the concept of family under the guise of defending women’s rights.”
The statement went on, “Trying to make up crimes against us with these unlawful and baseless allegations is deplorable even in terms of the current legal order.”
