Ankara raises measures to curb violence against women

ISTANBUL-Demirören News Agency

Turkey will take new steps to root out violence against women from society, the Interior Ministry said on Jan. 1.

Some 500,000 security forces personnel will receive trainings to sensitize them to the crime as part of the initiative, according to a circular.

The personnel will be allowed to confiscate licensed guns of suspects under trial through a court order.

Special units within the police and gendarmerie forces will be established to fight violence against women.

Those convicted of the crime will have to wear electronic monitoring bracelets.

Representatives of public institutions will have a seat in the commissions founded in every district to monitor and coordinate efforts to prevent violence against women.

Academics, women’s rights groups, bar associations and non-governmental organizations will also be invited to the commission meetings, which will take place at least four times a year.

Only some 20 percent of domestic violence incidents are reported to the police or judiciary because they often take place in private spaces, the circular recalled, encouraging governors to collaborate with local heads, teachers, family practitioners and religious affairs officials to detect those incidents even if the aggrieved person does not file a complaint.

The Emergency Support for Women (KADES) smartphone application will be improved and promoted to the public, according to the circular.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) has assigned local courts specialized in cases of violence against women.

Those specialized courts will swiftly take protective and preventive measure decisions for women exposed to violence, according to the HSK decision published in the Official Gazette.

“We will not solely monitor the women by assigning a guard for them. We will also follow the men. We will monitor them [violence suspects] with an electronic bracelet,” Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu had said last year.

Cases of violence against women are commonplace in Turkey.

According to the We Will Stop Femicides Platform, a women’s rights organization that keeps a tally of murders of women, 474 women were killed at the hands of violent men in 2019.

They say authorities are failing to apply laws to protect them and demand the Istanbul Convention, a Council of Europe agreement to combat violence against women, is implemented.