Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention over the weekend, part of a wider crackdown on human rights, gay rights and women’s rights by the authoritarian governing AK Party. Now the White House has slammed Turkey for its “unwarranted withdrawal.” This is part of building displeasure with Turkey’s increasing extremism and far-right government, as well as imprisonment of activists such as Osman Kavala and Turkey’s attempt to ban the opposition HDP party. Turkey recently bashed US President Joe Biden for comments he made about Russia’s President. In the past Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was close to US President Donald Trump and often would call Trump and berate the US between 2016 and 2020.
“Turkey’s sudden and unwarranted withdrawal from the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, is deeply disappointing,” the US statement reads. “Around the world, we are seeing increases in the number of domestic violence incidents, including reports of rising femicide in Turkey, the first nation to sign the convention. Countries should be working to strengthen and renew their commitments to ending violence against women, not rejecting international treaties designed to protect women and hold abusers accountable. This is a disheartening step backward for the international movement to end violence against women globally.” Turkey has reportedly claimed, among other reasons, it withdrew from the convention because it is against homosexuality. Turkey's ruling party often incites against gay rights and LGBT activists.
Biden’s statement comes as women are increasingly targeted in Turkey. Police detained women who protested yesterday in Ankara. Police have been filmed attacking women protesters, a common occurrence in Turkey. Women protesters were also attacked in December in Turkey. In February Turkey’s ruling party attacked gay rights protesters and called them deviants and “terrorists” ordering police to arrest them. The UN Human Rights office said that it “called for the prompt release of students and protestors arrested for participating in peaceful demonstrations, and urge the police to stop using excessive force. We condemn homophobic & transphobic comments by officials, inciting hatred & discrimination against LGBT people.” Turkey also attacked Bugazici student protesters.
The New York Times highlighted the cases of increasing domestic abuse on March 16 in Turkey. According to reports 408 women were killed last year in Turkey. Many examples show women attacked on buses, kidnapped or beaten in public, including by police. In a particularly horrific video a man was seen beating a woman to death in the street at night in early March. Turkey has also exported its attacks on women abroad. It invaded Afrin and Kurdish areas in Syria in 2018 and 2019, removing women from public areas and installing extremists. In the US Turkey’s presidential bodyguards even attacked women protests in the heart of Washington D.C in 2017.
President Biden said in his March 21 statement that “gender-based violence is a scourge that touches every nation in every corner of the world. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen too many examples of horrific and brutal assaults on women, including the tragic murders in Georgia. And we’ve seen the broader damage that living under the daily specter of gender-based violence does to women everywhere. It hurts all of us, and we all must do more to create societies where women are able to go about their lives free from violence.”
Turkey’s ruling AKP party is full of far-right extremists and has few women voices in its leadership. In February Twitter even had to flag as “hateful” comments by Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu. Turkey has had the same party in charge for almost twenty years and a referendum enabled a stronger presidency in 2017. Turkey’s Erdogan has proposed changes to the constitution and seeks to consolidate power by banning opposition parties. Turkey has moved closer to Iran and Russia and China in recent years, studying how Iran’s regime stays in power and seeking to model Ankara’s rule on Russia. Turkey has also threatened Greece, Egypt, Israel, the UAE, Armenia and other countries and hosts Hamas terrorists. It has sought to roll back women’s rights in Syria by attacking Kurdish areas where women often play a major role in politics. Turkey even encouraged extremists it backed in October 2019 to hunt down and killed Syrian female activist Hevrin Khalaf. Ankara also purged some 160,000 people after a coup attempt in 2016, seeking to consolidate control over the courts, universities, police, army, civil service and other parts of society. As the largest jailor of journalists, there is no free media in Turkey and the country increasingly looks more like Iran’s theocratic regime in the way it treats women and activists.
The Biden administration has vowed to make human rights a centerpiece of its policy. During the Trump years the US stopped talking about human rights and the administration worked closely with Turkey. Turkey’s president was one of the few world leaders who enjoyed a direct line to the US president and would often call Trump and order the US to leave Syria. Trump twice attempted to comply with Ankara’s orders. In the end even with a very pro-Turkish series of envoys at the US state department and in the White House, Turkey was not able to get the US to withdraw from Syria. Turkey slammed Joe Biden when he was running for president, bashed US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even got state media to excoriate Brett McGurk, the US National Security Council’s Middle East coordinator. Turkey’s attempt to interfere in US domestic politics, elections and even appointments like McGurk illustrates how close it was to the last US administration. Now it appears the White House has tired of the abusive behavior of Ankara.