It is a decision of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that angered part of Turkish society.

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday March 27, for the second weekend in a row, to protest the withdrawal of the world's first binding treaty to fight violence against women.

Already last Saturday, several thousand people demonstrated in Turkey to ask the president to reverse his decision.

In a decree published overnight from Friday to Saturday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his country's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, the first international treaty to set legally binding standards in around thirty countries to prevent gender-based violence.

This decision, taken as femicides have been on the rise for a decade in Turkey, has aroused the anger of women's rights organizations and critics from the European Union, Washington and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. UN human rights.

300 women murdered in 2020

Justifying the decision to step down, the Turkish presidency claimed last week that the instrument had been "hijacked by a group of people trying to normalize homosexuality", which it said was "incompatible" with "the values social and family "policies of Turkey.

In Istanbul's Kadiköy neighborhood, hundreds of women again urged the Turkish president on Saturday to back down, an AFP correspondent noted.

In Ankara, a small group of women demonstrated in the city center, surrounded by riot police.

In the Turkish capital as in Istanbul, chants of "we are not afraid, we will not remain silent, we will not obey" were heard.

The news of the death of a 17-year-old pregnant girl, stabbed in the Aegean province of Izmir according to the official Anadolu news agency, caused a stir on Saturday.

The suspect would be the man she lived with.

In 2020, 300 women were murdered in Turkey and there is no sign of slowing this trend, with 87 women killed so far this year, according to women's rights group We Will Stop Femicide Platform.

With AFP

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