ANKARA — As Turkey marked one of its deadliest weeks for femicide, women’s rights activists blame the government for undermining protections while promoting rhetoric that incites fury against women’s freedom and lifestyle choices.

Nine women were killed in Turkey last week, many by spouses or former spouses, according to We Will Stop Femicide, a nongovernmental organization that tracks gender-based violence, marking the deadliest weeks since the first week of October 2024, which saw 14 femicides. October of that year was the deadliest month since the organization started tracking in 2010, with 48 femicides recorded. 

Women’s rights groups point to the government’s undercutting of legal protections, including its 2021 withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty aimed at combating gender-based violence, combined with rhetoric that reduces women to their family roles and criticizes their lifestyle choices, for fueling the rise in gender-based violence.

Among the women murdered is Saliha Akkas, a staff member at the Turkish Parliament, who was stabbed to death last Wednesday by her husband, from whom she was in the process of divorcing and against whom she had obtained a restraining order, sparking an outcry among progressive and women’s rights groups.