The movement sent shockwaves through a country that has been plagued by high-profile domestic violence and femicide.
It is unclear why Erdogan decided to renounce the convention. Turkish women’s rights activists have protested against the withdrawal, while some conservatives say it harms the family’s traditional values.
Public debate around the convention peaked in August, when religious and conservative groups began an intense lobbying effort against the convention, robbing it of degrading family values and advocating for the LGBTQ community.
Erdogan’s cabinet has come out to assure people that the withdrawal from the convention will not mean the withdrawal of the rules on domestic violence and women’s rights. “The guarantee of women’s rights is present in our current laws and especially in our constitution. Our judicial system is dynamic and strong enough to implement new regulations as needed,” said Family and Social Policy Minister Zehra Zumrut Selcuk on Twitter.
Turkey’s main opposition called the move an effort to relegate “women to second-class citizens” and promised to bring the country back to the convention, saying the current government had failed to secure the rights of women and children. “You fail to protect the right to life,” said Gokce Gokcen, an opposition MP on Twitter.
A coalition of women’s groups said the presidential decree to withdraw from the convention felt like a “nightmare” and, by withdrawing from the convention, the government announced that it would no longer protect women from violence.
“It is clear that this withdrawal will empower killers, aggressors and rapists of women,” the coalition said in a statement.
Turkey does not have separately issued femicide numbers, but a non-governmental women’s rights group sets the number of women killed in 2021 at 77.