Women’s Activism for Democracy in Turkey: Impact, Limitations, and State Responses – On the Front Lines: Women’s Mobilization for Democracy in an Era of Backsliding
Table of Contents
The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP), a conservative party with Islamist roots, has controlled Turkey’s national government since 2002. Although the AKP under the leadership of current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan implemented some democratic reforms during its early years, it began to drift away from democracy later in the decade. Democratic backsliding intensified significantly in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt in 2016. A 2017 referendum transforming the parliamentary government into a presidential system marked an important turning point, effectively institutionalizing one-man rule. Over the past fifteen years, the government has systematically eroded the rule of law, relying on arbitrary prosecutions as well as restrictions on freedom of expression and association to tighten civic and political space.1
These antidemocratic measures have provoked intermittent waves of countermobilization. In 2013, the Gezi protests brought together a broad-based coalition of prodemocracy groups that initially challenged a local urban development effort in Istanbul but quickly expanded to contest the government’s broader attacks secularism and democracy. Offshoots of the Gezi protests, such as City Defenses or “park forums,” continued to challenge the government’s policies over the next several years by modeling an alternative form of politics rooted in dialogue and bottom-up participation.2 Although they gradually lost momentum, these prodemocracy groups also organized “no” campaigns in the lead-up to the 2017 referendum.
In recent years, democratic backsliding in Turkey has coincided with escalating attacks on women’s rights, triggering new forms of activism among women. Particularly in the lead-up to the 2023 election, women’s organizations that previously were less engaged in debates about democracy have become more involved. At the same time, women’s intersecting identities have also influenced the goals of their mobilization. For instance, Kurdish women have a long history of protest against undemocratic practices, fully aware of the detrimental consequences of autocratic centralization for their community. Some Islamic women, by contrast, have criticized the AKP’s approach to women’s rights yet generally have maintained their allegiance to the party. These divisions have made it difficult to build broad-based coalitions. Growing civic repression and the fact that even reform-minded political parties do not perceive women as significant political actors have further constrained women’s prodemocratic mobilization.
With their extensive experience in civic activism and their ability to connect with diverse segments of society, women nevertheless offer significant opportunities for democratic resistance in Turkey. The key challenge for the women’s rights movement lies in expanding to embrace a broader prodemocracy agenda while navigating the increasing pressure exerted by the state.
Women’s Activism and Turkish Prodemocracy Campaigns
The prodemocracy movement in Turkey encompasses diverse groups, from secularists and Kurdish nationalists to feminists and environmentalists. Over the past decade, these groups have come together in unified opposition to Erdoğan and his policies. They have organized various campaigns and protests against democratic backsliding, especially during the Gezi protests and in the years that followed. In the lead-up to the most recent May 2023 elections, prodemocratic mobilization focused primarily on preventing Erdoğan’s reelection. One of the strongest actors in this coalition was the Nation Alliance, a group of six political parties known as the Table of Six and led by the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, or CHP) that campaigned for restoring a strengthened parliamentary system, reversing democratic backsliding, and reinstating the rule of law. The Nation Alliance garnered support from many Turkish women’s organizations that openly endorsed CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the presidential candidate of the Nation Alliance. Recognizing the significance of the elections to preserving not only women’s rights but also the space to fight for those rights, many women activists adopted a broader prodemocracy discourse.
Although separate from the prodemocracy movement, the women’s rights movement in Turkey has contributed to the country’s democratic development and culture since the 1980s.3 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, secular women who identified as feminists—typically educated women based in Turkey’s urban centers—initiated campaigns and protest movements to advocate for women’s rights and against domestic violence, and they established new civil society organizations and women’s studies programs and centers within universities.4 These efforts had tangible results, including Turkey’s 1985 ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and a 1998 law on domestic violence prevention. In the early 2000s, feminist bureaucrats (“femocrats”) helped amend discriminatory articles in the legal framework, such as those that previously designated the husband as the head of the family and those pertaining to property regimes within families.
Yet the Turkish women’s rights movement is not homogenous: it encompasses secular, Islamic, and Kurdish feminists and organizations. These actors occasionally work together to advance joint priorities but also voice distinct political demands. For instance, Kurdish women have historically fought for women’s rights alongside the right to ethnic self-determination, challenging Kurdish patriarchy and the Turkish state—as well as Turkish women who dismiss their unique plight.5 By the late 1990s, they had successfully established a gender quota in Kurdish political parties, which they have worked to strengthen over time. Islamic women, by comparison, traditionally have mobilized for gender-based religious rights, especially following the Council of Ministers’ 1981 decision to ban students and women employees in public institutions from wearing headscarves. Embracing a language of rights, they argued that the headscarf ban violated their religious rights and their right to education.6
After the AKP’s ascent to power in 2002, the party initially leveraged women’s rights protections and liberal discourse on gender equality to soften any negative perceptions and fears related to its Islamist roots.7 The government during its first term advanced various women’s rights reforms to bolster its legitimacy, including with regard to secular Turkish elites in the military and state bureaucracy. However, as Erdoğan moved to centralize power and escalate civic repression, feminists’ political influence gradually waned. As the AKP marched toward authoritarianism, it rallied women aligned with conservative gender norms to support the party and established new conservative women’s institutions and organizations that supported the government’s political and ideological agenda. In his speeches, Erdoğan began lashing out against progressive gender norms and LGBTQ rights, framing them as opposed to Turkish culture and tradition.8
Over the past decade, the government has increasingly reinterpreted existing legal frameworks to advance conservative gender norms, using its growing control over the courts to strengthen the role of religion in family law and public life.9 For example, in 2019, Erdoğan began targeting the Istanbul Convention, a landmark treaty on preventing and combating domestic violence and violence against women, for undermining traditional family values. He eventually withdrew Turkey from the convention in 2021. Court rulings and laws formalizing religious marriage and granting religious officials the right to perform marriages have stripped women of their civil marriage rights and paved the way for an increase in early marriages. More recently, the Islamist parties that are part of the AKP’s current election alliance, the New Welfare Party (Yeniden Refah Partisi) and the Free Cause Party (HÜDA-Par), have sought to end indefinite alimony for divorced couples and amend Law No. 6284 on the Protection of the Family and the Prevention of Violence Against Women, which incorporates the Istanbul Convention into domestic law.10
As a result of these changes, many women across the ideological spectrum have felt that their rights are increasingly vulnerable. They have responded by mobilizing for women’s rights alongside standing up for democracy. For one, despite the constraints placed on the freedom of peaceful assembly, women have remained undeterred in their determination to take to the streets. In 2021, after Erdoğan issued a presidential decree announcing Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, they organized protests across fifty-one locations.11 They argued that leaving an internationally recognized treaty through a presidential decree, which had been approved by the parliament, not only disregarded the people’s will but also violated Turkish law.12
Furthermore, women’s organizations have actively mobilized during election campaigns. Before the 2017 presidential referendum, for instance, the We Will Stop Femicides platform moved beyond reporting on femicides to also launch a “no” campaign against Erdoğan’s proposed constitutional changes.13 The group spoke out about the government’s role in femicides, emphasizing the insufficient punishment of perpetrators and inadequate protection of women.14 It also demonstrated solidarity with the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet during its trial and protested the detention of Kurdish women politicians during the state of emergency imposed after the 2016 coup attempt.15 During the May 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections, various women’s organizations also called on women voters to oppose Erdoğan, pointing to the government’s economic mismanagement, the country’s deepening poverty, and the government’s mishandling of the catastrophic earthquake that struck the country in February. They organized on social media as well as offline, with groups such as Feminists for Elections distributing leaflets and engaging with women at public markets in Istanbul.16 As active participants in the campaign process, they urged women to stand up for their rights and exercise their right to vote.
In addition to mobilizing women voters against Erdoğan and the AKP, secular women’s organizations called on political parties to support women’s formal participation in politics. The number of women members of parliament in Turkey has historically been relatively low, rising from around 2 percent in the 1990s to slightly over 4 percent in 2002. Women’s representation gradually increased in subsequent years, fluctuating between 14 percent and 17 percent during the 2010s.17 Although the AKP’s percentage of women members of parliament was 11 percent and around 17 percent in the 2015 and 2018 elections, it was the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, or HDP) within the opposition that played a significant role in raising the overall percentage of women members of parliament.18 Ahead of the 2023 polls, women’s organizations therefore advocated for parties across the ideological spectrum to run as many women as men candidates and support women’s campaigns with party funding.19 To ensure that no further progress on women’s rights was lost, various women’s organizations also challenged the anti-feminist rhetoric of both the government and the Islamist parties with whom the government formed a new election alliance.
Islamic feminists have at various points joined the opposition to the AKP’s policies on women’s issues, though they have refrained from explicitly mobilizing against the government. In the 2010s, they launched initiatives such as Reçel (“Jam”) Blog, the Muslim Initiative Against Violence Against Women, and Women in Mosques to open a new space within the Turkish feminist movement for Muslim women. During this period, they actively voiced their objections to certain government policies that had an impact on women and girls. They expressed their concerns in debates regarding the authorization of religious officials to perform civil marriages and voiced their opposition to child abuse legislation.20 They also advocated for the Istanbul Convention.21 In the run-up to the May 2023 elections, Islamic feminists organized events to discuss the election process, but they did not directly campaign against Erdoğan. For instance, the Islamic women’s organization Havle brought together young religious women with women politicians from across the ideological spectrum to discuss young women’s priorities ahead of the elections.22 Many religious women attending these meetings were critical of the government’s social policies, especially of social and economic assistance that supports women only within the framework of the family. Like other women’s organizations and activists, Islamic feminists also disputed women’s underrepresentation in and exclusion from elected office.23
Kurdish women’s organizations and activists, by contrast, have a long history of protesting undemocratic practices and recognizing their detrimental consequences for women in the region. Indeed, Kurdish women’s organizations have established a narrative that explicitly links the broader democratic struggle to the advancement of women’s rights. For instance, the government has in recent years removed elected mayors from the pro-Kurdish HDP and replaced them with state-appointed trustees. Protesting this policy, Kurdish women activists have emphasized how the trustees have eliminated the gender quotas in hiring for which Kurdish women had fought, in addition to disbanding all women’s units and counseling centers previously established under the elected mayors. In other words, the central government’s intervention has led to women’s spaces being eroded.24 The Kurdish women’s movement therefore sees democratization as a necessary precondition for women’s empowerment and rights protections and views patriarchy as intrinsically connected to Kurdish oppression by the state.
Women’s intersecting identities thus have shaped their responses to democratic backsliding. Secular women have mobilized to preserve the rights they have acquired since the 1980s, whereas Kurdish women are dedicated to achieving ethnic self-determination. Islamic women who previously had advocated for gender-based religious rights have in recent years taken steps to challenge the prevailing Islamic patriarchy. In pursuit of their goals, each of these movements employs a language of rights and challenges the patriarchal structures of the state.
Women’s Impact on the Turkish Prodemocracy Movement—and Their Limits
One of the main successes of Turkish women’s mobilization over the past several years has been to bring women’s rights—and violence against women in particular—onto the political opposition’s agenda. For instance, Kılıçdaroğlu, the main opposition leader and presidential candidate, repeatedly defended Law No. 6284 (on violence against women) and said that the removal of the law should not be allowed.25 Prominent figures from another opposition party, İYİ, have also made supportive statements, asserting that “we are returning to all international agreements because we know that the Istanbul Convention saves lives.”26 Furthermore, the law granting religious officials the authority to conduct civil marriages has drawn negative reactions from opposition parties such as CHP, İYİ, and HDP since its conception.27
Yet women’s mobilization, while noteworthy, has so far failed to fundamentally reshape the Turkish prodemocracy movement, for three main reasons. First, collaboration among women’s organizations and other actors within the prodemocracy movement remains limited. There have been some examples of joint initiatives, such as the Rosa Women’s Association partnering with legal and medical associations to establish a network on combating violence against women.28 However, these alliances remain the exception rather than the rule. This rarity can be attributed to the fact that Turkish civil society organizations often have been inwardly focused, not just on their ideologies but also on specific thematic areas.29 In addition, the development of civil society in Turkey, with the exceptions of some women’s organizations, is recent. Many key actors are relatively new and do not know each other well, which inhibits alliance-building. As a result, the demands, expectations, and discourses of women’s rights advocates often do not extend beyond their own organizations and networks.
Second, heightened political and social polarization makes it difficult for women to build broad coalitions across ethnic and religious divides. As noted above, some conservative women close to the AKP have expressed their dissatisfaction with the AKP’s anti-feminist policies and the hostile rhetoric of party officials within the AKP’s electoral alliance. Similarly, some women AKP politicians and conservative women closely associated with the AKP—such as the Women and Democracy Association (KADEM)—have shown support for the Istanbul Convention and Law No. 6284.30 For instance, AKP Deputy Group Chair Özlem Zengin referred to Law No. 6284 as “our red line” in a parliamentary statement. Former minister of family and social services Derya Yanık also stated that “opening the subject to discussion is unacceptable to us.”31
Yet these expressions of protest by conservative women have not necessarily resulted in a complete break from the party. Instead, women in or close to the AKP who are uncomfortable with the government’s anti-feminist rhetoric still maintain their overall political identity. Their allegiance to the party—rooted in a broader set of ideological and political considerations—tends to outweigh these policy concerns. In short, women’s rights policies and concerns are not the primary factors shaping their alliances. Women’s efforts to build broader prodemocracy campaigns therefore suffer from low levels of unity, making it more difficult to bring women’s issues to the forefront.
The third challenge is that despite their active participation in protests and civic mobilization, women are still not seen as significant political actors by prodemocratic political parties. This mindset is most evident in the composition of opposition parties’ parliamentary candidate lists. With a few exceptions like the Green Left Party (now called the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party), most opposition parties ahead of the 2023 elections either limited the number of women candidates or strategically placed them in positions that offered them little chance of being elected. As a result, women’s representation in the newly formed Turkish parliament remains low. For instance, out of the 169 members of parliament representing the main opposition party, CHP, only 30 (17 percent) are women—a slightly lower share than in the AKP’s parliamentary faction, which includes 50 women among its 267 representatives. The İYİ Party, the CHP’s largest partner in the Nation Alliance, also counts only 6 women among its 44 representatives.32 Women’s marginalization in parliament is further reinforced by high levels of party discipline, which constrains women’s ability to speak up on gender issues.33
The consequences of these exclusionary practices are far-reaching. In recent years, political parties have increasingly emerged as a key platform for prodemocratic opposition in Turkey. Women’s exclusion from these parties therefore poses a particularly pressing challenge. The parties disregarding women as full political subjects and failing to provide them with opportunities for meaningful participation restricts women’s ability to consolidate their voices and interests within broader prodemocracy campaigns, particularly since women’s strong representation in parliament would likely bolster their influence in civil society as well. Conversely, the opposition’s exclusionary practices limit the overall impact of women’s advocacy for their rights and democratic values.
Understanding State Responses to Women’s Activism
Women’s mobilization in Turkey is unfolding in a context of increasing state hostility. Over the past fifteen years, but particularly since the 2016 coup attempt, the government has imposed significant restrictions on peaceful assembly and freedom of association. The police have intervened consistently to limit street mobilization, including for the International Women’s Day march on March 8, protests in solidarity with the Istanbul Convention, and demonstrations against violence toward women. In addition, many women’s rights activists have been arrested and fined for their participation in peaceful protests and campaigns in recent years. Women activists and politicians who protested Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, for example, were met with a wave of criminal complaints.34 The total amount of fines imposed on members of the Mersin Women’s Platform, who organized a sit-in protest, exceeded 120,000 Turkish lira (around $14,000).35
Increasingly, women activists and women’s rights organizations have been attacked when they adopt broader prodemocracy discourse and challenge the government’s policies. For instance, many members of the Kurdish Rosa Women’s Association, which protested the replacement of elected mayors by state-appointed trustees in southeastern Turkey, have been detained and arrested in various waves.36 Similarly, in response to their work monitoring violence against LGBTQ individuals, the We Will Stop Femicides Platform in 2021 faced a lawsuit accusing the group of “engaging in activities contrary to law and morality” and requesting the association’s dissolution. In September, courts dismissed this lawsuit.37
An important reason for the increasing pressure on women activists and women’s organizations who advocate for democracy lies in Turkey’s highly polarized environment. The government perceives any prodemocracy stance as a sign of support for the political opposition. Consequently, it does not view women activists as independent civic actors but rather as integral parts of the opposition landscape. Especially during election periods, it therefore relies on legal cases, detentions, and arrests to divert the focus, energy, and resources of women activists, thereby suppressing women’s autonomous activism altogether. These tactics are also aimed at stigmatizing and criminalizing women’s organizations in order to diminish their legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Pressure on women activists and women’s rights organizations thus serves a dual purpose: disrupting their efforts from within and undermining their credibility externally.
Conclusion
Turkey’s long-standing women’s rights movement has a wealth of policy and advocacy expertise and enjoys widespread grassroots support. Over the years, this movement has achieved significant progress for women’s rights and gender equality. At the same time, some women’s organizations and women activists have also engaged in prodemocracy initiatives. Secular women’s involvement in prodemocratic mobilization has aimed to preserve their hard-fought legal rights and political spaces, whereas Islamic women have traditionally aimed to expand gender-based religious rights. More recently, both groups have voiced opposition to the Erdoğan government’s policies on women’s rights and participated in some initiatives to open up new political spaces for women. Kurdish women’s mobilization, by contrast, is influenced by their perception of patriarchy as inherently intertwined with the Turkish state’s oppression of the Kurds. Despite state restrictions on peaceful demonstrations, the determination of these diverse women to take to the streets to protest has served as a powerful testament to their commitment to defending their rights.
However, the impact of women’s mobilization on the broader prodemocracy movement has remained somewhat limited. In recent years, opposition to Erdoğan has consolidated in opposition political parties, yet these parties have not fully recognized women as critical political agents. In addition, despite the potential for agreement on specific issues with the AKP’s stance on gender-related issues, political and social polarization poses a significant challenge to coalition-building. Moreover, the women’s movement has increasingly become a target of government repression. The pressures on and the scrutiny faced by women’s organizations are even greater when they explicitly embrace prodemocracy discourse and activism. However, despite these pressures, women continue to mobilize. Their activism is crucial not only for safeguarding past gains in women’s rights but also for preserving space for the women’s rights movement, with its extensive experience and commitment to democracy, to continue its advocacy.
The Carnegie Endowment thanks the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Ford Foundation for generous support that helps make the work of the Civic Research Network possible. The views expressed in this publication are the responsibility of the authors alone.
Notes
1 Yeşim Arat and Şevket Pamuk, “Islamists in Power,” in Yeşim Arat and Şevket Pamuk, eds., Turkey Between Democracy and Authoritarianism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019): 88–129.
2 Özge Zihnioğlu, “Strategizing Post-Protest Activism in Abeyance: Retaining Activist Capital under Political Constraint,” Social Movement Studies 22, no. 1 (2023): 122–37,
3 Yeşim Arat and Şevket Pamuk, “Women’s Call for Democracy,” in Arat and Pamuk, Turkey Between Democracy and Authoritarianism, 250.
4 Arat and Pamuk, “Women’s Call for Democracy,” 230–37.
5 Arat and Pamuk, “Women’s Call for Democracy,” 244
6 Arat and Pamuk, “Women’s Call for Democracy,” 240–41.
7 Yeşim Arat, “Democratic Backsliding and the Instrumentalization of Women’s Rights in Turkey,” Politics & Gender 18, no. 4 (2022): 911–41.
8 See, for instance “Erdoğan: Kadın-Erkek Eşitliği Fıtrata Ters [Erdoğan: Gender equality goes against nature], BBC, November 24, 2014, “Erdoğan: Doğum Kontrolü ile Yıllarca İhanet Yaptılar” [Erdoğan: They betrayed for years with birth control], BBC, December 22, 2014, and “LGBT Dayatması Aileyi ve İslami Değerleri Zayıflatmayı Amaçlayan Bir Tehdittir” [The imposition of LGBT is a threat aimed at weakening the family and Islamic values], Bianet, November 22, 2022,
9 Arat and Pamuk, “Women’s Call for Democracy”; and Arat, “Democratic Backsliding and the Instrumentalization of Women’s Rights.”
10 New Welfare Party, “Party Constitution,” April 13, 2023, and HÜDA PAR, “Seçim Vizyon Belgesi” [Election vision document], 2023,
11 Çatlak Zemin, “İstanbul Sözleşmesi bizim! İl il eylem yerleri” [The Istanbul convention is ours! Protest locations by province], March 20, 2021,
12 Sözcü, “‘İstanbul Sözleşmesi’ feshine tepki! Sokağa döküldüler” [Reaction to the termination of the Istanbul Convention! They took to the streets], March 20, 2021,
13 Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu, “Bu Mektup Tum Kadinlar Icindir” [This letter is for all women], September 4, 2017,
14 Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu, “Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu 2022 Yıllık Veri Raporu” [We Will Stop Femicide Platform 2022 Annual Data Report], January 2, 2023,
15 @KadinCinayeti, October 31, 2016, 5:56 PM, Twitter, https://twitter.com/KadinCinayeti/status/793149779362586624; and @KadinCinayeti, November 5, 2016, 8:45 PM, Twitter, https://twitter.com/KadinCinayeti/status/795004140032327681.
16 Bianet, “Seçim İçin Feministler: Haklarımızdan vazgeçmeyeceğiz” [Feminists for election: We will not give up our rights], May 25, 2023,
17 Burcu Taşkın, “Political Representation of Women in Turkey. Institutional Opportunities Versus Cultural Constraints,” Open Gender Journal (2021): 6–7,
18 Pınar Tarcan, “AK Parti’nin Mecliste Kadın Temsilini Artırdığı İddiası” [Allegation that the AK Party increased women’s representation in parliament], Teyit, April 4, 2023,
19 EŞİK Platform, “EŞİK Platform’dan Siyasi Partilere Açık Mektup” [Open letter to political parties from EŞİK Platform], March 30, 2023, and Kadın Adayları Destekleme Derneği, “KA.DER’in Siyasi Partilere Açık Çağrısı” [KA.DER’s open call to political parties],
20 Kadına Şiddete Karşı Müslümanlar İnisiyatifi, “Müftülere Resmi Nikah Yetkisi Tartışmalarında Biz Neredeyiz?” [Where are we in the discussions on official marriage authorization for muftis?], October 26, 2019, and Kadına Şiddete Karşı Müslümanlar İnisiyatifi, “Erkek Şiddetini Görünmez Kılan Yasa Tasarısına İtiraz Ediyoruz!” [We object to the bill that makes male violence invisible!], October 16, 2019,
21 @HavleKadin, March 20, 2021, 1:25 PM, Twitter, https://twitter.com/HavleKadin/status/1373264373431599120; and @HavleKadin, May 24, 2021, 9:49 PM, Twitter, https://twitter.com/HavleKadin/status/1396931376469975050.
22 “Havle Kadın Derneği Kadın Masasına Çağırıyor” [Havle Women’s Association calls to the women’s table], Bianet, April 20, 2023,
23 Havle Kadın Derneği, Kadınların Masası: Dindar Kadınlar Yeni Dönemden Ne Bekliyor? [Women’s desk: What do religious women expect from the new era?], Seçimine Doğru, May 14, 2023,
24 Çatlak Zemin, “Baskıdan vazgeçin yoksa daha çok büyüyecek bu mücadele” [Give up the pressure or this fight will grow even bigger], June 20, 2022,
25 “6284 sayılı kanun nedir, neden yeniden gündeme geldi?” [What is Law No. 6284 and why is it on the agenda again?], BBC News Türkçe, March 14, 2023,
26 Seda Taşkın, “Millet İttifakı’nda İstanbul Sözleşmesi’nin ‘Adı’ Yok ‘Sözü’ Var” [There is no “name” for the Istanbul Convention in the Nation Alliance, it has a “word”], Artı Gerçek, January 30, 2023,
27 Hilal Köylü, “Müftülere nikah yetkisi hazırlığı tartışma yarattı” [Preparation for marriage authorization for muftis created controversy], Deutsche Welle Türkçe, July 29, 2017,
28 Mahmut Bozarslan, “Kadın cinayetlerine kadınlardan tepki” [Women’s reaction to femicides], VOA Türkçe, October 12, 2021,
29 Yaşama Dair Vakıf, “Sivil toplumun siyaset ve karar mekanizmalariyla ilişkilerinin incelenmesi araştırması” [Research on the investigation of civil society relations with politics and decision mechanisms], 2022,
30 “KADEM’den İstanbul Sözleşmesine destek: Şiddete başvurup bir tarafa zulmedilen bir ilişkide artık ‘aileden’ bahsedemeyiz” [Support from KADEM to the Istanbul Convention: “We can no longer say ‘family’ in a relationship where violence is used and one side is oppressed”], BBC News Türkçe, August 1, 2020,
31 “6284 sayılı kanun nedir, neden yeniden gündeme geldi?,” BBC News Türkçe.
32 Veri Kaynağı, “Yıllara göre kadın milletvekili sayıları” [Number of women members of parliament by year], March 6, 2023,
33 Burcu Taşkın, “Cherry-Picking in Policymaking: The EU’s Presumptive Roles on Gender Policymaking in Turkey,” in Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm and F. Melis Cin, eds., Feminist Framing of Europeanization: Gender Equality Policies in Turkey and the EU (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020): 131–56.
34 Sessiz Kalma, “İstanbul Sözleşmesi Savunucuları” [Istanbul Convention advocates], June 7, 2023,
35 Sessiz Kalma, “Mersin Kadın Platformu” [Mersin Women’s platform], May 29, 2021,
36 Sessiz Kalma, “Rosa Kadın Derneği” [Rosa Women’s Association], September 12, 2023,
37 Sessiz Kalma, “Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu” [We Will Stop Femicide Platform], September 13, 2023,
