Turkey Is Trying to Shutter Its Largest Women’s Rights Group

Muhterem Göçmen, 31, survived years of domestic violence at the hands of her husband before filing for divorce in 2013. Five months later, he murdered her. At Göçmen’s funeral in Istanbul, two women from We Will Stop Femicides (WWSF), the largest women’s rights group in Turkey that tracks femicide cases across the country, approached her family. Speaking with Göçmen’s grieving sister, Cigdem Kuzey, the women agreed that WWSF would provide the family with legal and psychosocial support while pursuing a life sentence for Göçmen’s murderer.

“I hugged the platform with pain in those difficult days,” said Kuzey in a statement provided by WWSF. “The women were with me.”

Today, however, WWSF is facing an existential crisis as the Turkish government moves to shut the group down. In a legal challenge against WWSF, public prosecutors argue that the group’s activism has “disintegrated the family structure … under the guise of defending women’s rights.” WWSF and its supporters believe that this lawsuit has political motivations, appealing to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s conservative voter base while distracting from the country’s economic challenges.

Ahmet Eliacık, a member of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), filed an initial complaint against the group in 2016, demanding that WWSF shutter its doors and abandon its activism. Notably, Eliacık filed the complaint after spending two nights in jail for failing to pay alimony. He has argued that WWSF has led to the disintegration of families across Turkey, including his own. While the initial complaint was filed nearly six years ago, the lawsuit was served only this April, in 2022.

“This case is unlawful and should never have been opened,” said Gülsüm Kav, a founding member of WWSF and the group’s representative.

WWSF has been working across Turkey since 2010 to protect women’s and LGBTQIA+ people’s equality, freedom, and human rights, beginning with their right to life. “We follow the cases in the courthouses of each province,” said Melek Önder, a spokeswoman for the WWSF platform. “There is no courthouse where we have not set foot.”

Every month, the group publicizes a chilling tally of women murdered in Turkey — along with suspicious deaths — on their site and social media, drawing attention to the authorities’ failure to provide protection. In May, 35 women were murdered by men in Turkey, according to the group. And while these cases are still under investigation, many of these women had applied for a protection or restraining order at some point.

Activists have long raised issues with Turkey’s court and law enforcement systems that leave women at risk of domestic violence and murder. In its analysis, Human Rights Watch foundfailures in the use of protective and cautionary orders, which leave “dangerous protection gaps for women, if not rendering [the orders] meaningless.” Authorities and activists are still investigating whether 251 of the women killed in 2021 had a protection order. Of the cases that have been investigated, 24 of the women had a restraining or protection order, while nine women had filed complaints with the police or the prosecutor’s office.

Göçmen was under a protection order at the time of her murder, which did little to prevent her husband from coming to her workplace at a beauty salon and stabbing her to death. Following her murder, Göçmen’s family asked for a maximum sentence of aggravated life imprisonment. In Turkey, prisoners sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment are eligible for parole after serving 36 years of a single sentence. In contrast, prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment may apply for conditional release after serving their minimum sentence and are eligible for parole after serving 24 years of a single sentence. The courts sentenced Göçmen’s husband to life imprisonment, citing his “good behavior.”

Erdoğan’s political brand

The lawsuit against WWSF falls in line with Erdoğan’s political opposition to feminism and LGBTQIA+ rights. During the pandemic, conservative politicians in Turkey used the LGBTQIA+ community as scapegoats, fanning homophobic rhetoric and violence: In April 2020, the head of the religious affairs directorate stated that homosexuality “brings illness.” Throwing his support behind these comments, Erdoğan said that any attack on the quoted official amounted to an “attack on the state and Islam.”

Last year, Erdoğan withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, a key international treaty that prevents violence against women and LGBTQIA+ people. The AKP supported the decision by painting Turkey’s LGBTQIA+ community as Westerners who were trying to subvert Turkey’s morals, culture, and religion.

“LGBT — there is no such thing,” Erdoğan said in a televised address to the party.

Istanbul’s annual Pride march was officially banned by The Istanbul Governor’s Office in 2015 but has continued running despite severe security risks — including from the state itself. Last year, police officers fired tear gas at Pride demonstrators and arrested about 20 people.

WWSF has also advocates against homophobia and transphobia, publishing statistics on its web channels of violence against LGBTQIA+ people across the country. Last month, WWSF publicized incident on its website in Eskişehir, where brochures were distributed calling for the “killing, stoning and even burning” of LGBTQIA+ people. In addition, WWSF monitored the Boğaziçi Pride Parade in May 2022, in which 70 students were taken into custody by police. These activities run in parallel with the organization’s legal support for survivors and victims’ families of LGBTQIA+ violence as they struggle for justice in the courts, including advocating for prisoners who are often subjected to homophobic and transphobic violence and harassment while incarcerated.

Cracking down on civil society

The case against WWSF can be seen as part of Erdoğan’s continued efforts to constrain civil society organizations and silence opposition voices, citing the 2016 coup attempt. During the bloody operation, a section of Turkey’s military launched a coordinated assault against Erdoğan’s government in several cities across Turkey, leaving nearly 250 people dead. Those forces were eventually defeated by loyalist troops, police, and civilians, but the attempt is still cited by the government to justify cracking down on dissent under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts.

In late December 2020, the Turkish Parliament passed a law strengthening the government’s grip on nonprofits and NGOs — a move that human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, consider to be a turning point in the limitation of freedoms.

In a common tactic used by authoritarian and hybrid regimes, Ankara is also funding government-controlled women’s organizations, including KADEM, whose deputy chair is Erdoğan’s daughter. Hybrid regimes, like Turkey's, combine democratic and autocratic features of government, meaning they may simultaneously hold free elections while repressing political freedoms. Activists have argued that these government-sponsored women’s organizations provide the veneer of dialogue while muting feminist perspectives.

Political motives

The Turkish government has a record of targeting human rights defenders and suppressing their work. In April, Ankara sentenced human rights activist and philanthropist Osman Kavala to life in prison for organizing and financing anti-government protests and being an agent of billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the target of far-right conspiracy theories across the globe. Prior to the verdict, Kavala spent four years in prison without being convicted.

The United States, Turkey’s NATO ally, has condemned the ruling, pointing to “continued judicial harassment of civil society, media, political and business leaders in Turkey.”

At the same time, Ankara’s targeting of feminist organizations serves as a welcome distraction from the declining economy and shrinking value of the Turkish lira. Turkey’s Central Bank reserves are declining, while the trade deficit is widening. The annual inflation rate in Turkey has jumped to its highest level in 24 years, at 73.5 percent in May.

“Erdoğan lost his control of the economy,” said Dr. Nesrin Nas, a Turkish academic and a former deputy in Turkish Parliament. “He wants to deepen the polarization to prevent the people’s real problems from being talked about. He needs to renew and consolidate his old ties with Islamic religious groups.”

On June 1, during the suit’s first hearing, hundreds of WWSF supporters, including bar associations and human rights groups, rallied outside Istanbul’s main court, many carrying signs that read, “You will never walk alone.”

“There is a lot of pressure on civil society,” said Ema Sinclair, Turkey director for Human Rights Watch. “But there’s no reason to believe that women’s rights groups will be silenced.”

Kuzey joined these demonstrations, recounting the support WSSF provided following her sister’s murder. For Kuzey, along with survivors and family members affected by gender-based violence, advocacy for WWSF will continue throughout the trial.

“The court case can’t intimidate us,” said Kuzey, who channels the grief from her sister’s murder into her activism. “They must first prevent the violence. They must stop femicide in order to silence us.”

The suit’s next court date is October 5.