Number of women murdered by men grows rapidly in Turkey

PanARMENIAN.Net - In the first five months of 2017, 173 women were killed or forced to commit suicide in misogynist attacks by men across Turkey compared with 137 in the same period of 2016, according to the women's rights group We Will Stop Femicide, AFP reports.

210 Turkish women were killed in 2012 in misogynist attacks, and since then there has been a chilling increase in the number of women killed, often at the hands of men they know.

Newspapers report almost daily on murders of women by men they knew, and the rights group says 328 women were killed last year.

In the first five months of 2017, 173 women were killed across Turkey compared with 137 in the same period of 2016, the group said in its monthly report in May.

Since 2010, 118 women have been killed in Izmir alone, even though the city, Turkey's third-largest, is considered its most progressive and a bastion of secular society.

Women's activists told AFP that the rise in killings had come as more women sought to exercise their rights, including divorcing abusive partners.

"Women are changing but men are not. Men cannot keep up and there is a crisis," said Gulsum Kav, a founding member of We Will Stop Femicide.

The Turkish government has said that the number of women killed every year is unacceptable, but activists warn that the problem is getting worse.