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Joe Biden has joined European leaders in condemning Turkey’s withdrawal from a landmark international agreement designed to protect women from violence.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a decree on Saturday morning canceling Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul convention, a landmark European treaty protecting women from violence that was the first country to sign 10 years ago and It is named after its largest city.
The convention requires governments to adopt laws that prosecute domestic violence and similar abuses, as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.
The US president called the move “deeply disappointing” and said it was a step backward in efforts to end violence against women.
“Countries must work to strengthen and renew their commitments to end violence against women, not reject international treaties designed to protect women and hold abusers accountable,” Biden said in a statement.
The move is a blow to women’s rights advocates, who say the deal is crucial to combating domestic violence. Femicide in Turkey has tripled in 10 years, according to a monitoring group.
Hundreds of women gathered in demonstrations across Turkey on Saturday to protest against the measure. “Reverse your decision, apply the treaty,” thousands of people chanted during a protest in the Kadıköy neighborhood on the Asian side of Istanbul.
The protesters held portraits of murdered women in Turkey, one of which read: “It is the women who will win this war.”
“As women, we now think of the withdrawal as a direct attack on women’s rights and a direct attack on the rights of modern young women, in particular,” said 21-year-old Ebru Batur. “This, of course, makes us feel insecure and as if our rights are being taken away from us.”
Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejčinović Burić called the decision devastating.
“We cannot help but deeply regret and express our incomprehension towards the decision of the Turkish government,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
There is a risk of compromising the protection and fundamental rights of women and girls in Turkey. [and] it sends a dangerous message to everyone, ”he said. “Therefore, we cannot help but urge Turkey to reverse its decision.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, who spoke to Erdogan a day before Turkey left the pact, tweeted on Sunday: “Women deserve a strong legal framework to protect them” and called on all signatories to ratify it.
Conservatives in Turkey had claimed that the letter damaged the family unit and encouraged divorce, and that the LGBT community was using its references to equality to gain wider acceptance in society.
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, one of Erdogan’s main rivals, tweeted that the decision “tramples on the struggle that women have been waging for years.”
Gökçe Gökçen, vice chairman of the main opposition CHP party, said abandoning the treaty meant “keeping second-class female citizens and letting them kill them.”
“Despite you and your evil, we will stay alive and bring the convention back,” he said on Twitter.
Even the pro-government Association for Women and Democracy (Kadem), whose vice president is Erdogan’s youngest daughter, expressed some concern, saying that the Istanbul convention “played an important role in the fight against violence.”
In response to the avalanche of criticism, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said that “our institutions and our security forces will continue to fight against domestic violence and violence against women.”
Domestic violence and femicide remain a serious problem in Turkey. Last year, 300 women were murdered and the rate is accelerating, with 77 murdered already this year, according to the rights group We Will Stop Femicide Platform.
“The Istanbul convention was not signed under his command and he will not leave our lives under his command,” tweeted the platform’s secretary general, Fidan Ataselim.
The country was also rocked by a video widely spread on social media earlier this month showing a man beating his ex-wife on the street. The man was arrested on Sunday and Erdogan announced that a parliamentary commission would be created to examine legislation to combat violence.
Human rights groups accuse Erdogan of leading Turkey, mostly Muslim but officially secular, on an increasingly socially conservative tack during his 18 years in power.
After a spectacular Pride march in Istanbul drew 100,000 people in 2014, the government responded by banning future events in the city, claiming to have security concerns.
