By Ayse Wieting and Suzan Fraser | Associated Press
ISTANBUL — Muhterem Evcil was stabbed to death by her estranged husband at her workplace in Istanbul, where he had repeatedly harassed her in breach of a restraining order. The day before, authorities detained him for violating the order but let him go free after questioning.
More than a decade later, her sister believes Evcil would still be alive if authorities had enforced laws on protecting women and jailed him.
“As long as justice is not served and men are always put on the forefront, women in this country will always cry,” Cigdem Kuzey said.
Evcil’s murder in 2013 became a rallying call for greater protection for women in Turkey, but activists say the country has made little progress in keeping women from being killed. They say laws to safeguard women are not sufficiently enforced and abusers are not prosecuted.
At least 403 women were killed in Turkey last year, most of them by current or former spouses and other men close to them, according to the We Will Stop Femicides Platform, a group that tracks gender-related killings and provides support to victims of violence.
So far this year 71 women have been killed in Turkey, including seven on Feb. 27 — the highest known number of such killings there on a single day.
The WWSF secretary general, Fidan Ataselim, attributed the killings to deeply patriarchal traditions in the majority Muslim country and to a greater number of women wishing to leave troubled relationships. Others want to work outside the home.
“Women in Turkey want to live more freely and more equally. Women have changed and progressed a lot in a positive sense,” Ataselim said. “Men cannot accept this, and they are violently trying to suppress the progress of women.”
Turkey was the first country to sign and ratify a European treaty on preventing violence against women — known as the Istanbul Convention — in 2011. But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withdrew Turkey…
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