Joe Biden joined European leaders in condemning Turkey’s withdrawal from a historic international agreement created to protect women from violence.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a decree early Saturday overturning Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul convention, a landmark of the European treaty that protects women from violence, which was the first country to sign ten years ago and bears the name of its biggest city.
The convention requires governments to adopt legislation that prosecutes domestic violence and similar abuses, as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.
The US president called the measure “deeply disappointing”, saying it was a setback in efforts to end violence against women.
“Countries should work to strengthen and renew their commitments to end violence against women, not to reject international treaties designed to protect women and hold aggressors to account,” Biden said in a statement.
The move is a blow to women’s rights defenders, who say the deal is crucial to tackling 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 the change. “Reverse your decision, apply the treaty,” shouted thousands of people during a protest in the neighborhood of Kadıköy, on the Asian side of Istanbul.
The demonstrators displayed portraits of women murdered in Turkey, one of whom said: “It is women who will win this war”.
“As women, we now think that withdrawal is a direct attack on the rights of women and a direct attack on the rights of modern young women, in particular,” said Ebru Batur, 21. “This, of course, makes us insecure and as if our rights are appropriate.”
The Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, found the decision devastating.
“We cannot help but deeply regret and express incomprehension about the Turkish government’s decision,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
“You run the risk of compromising the protection and fundamental rights of women and girls in Turkey [and] sends a dangerous message across the world, ”he said. “Therefore, we cannot help urging Turkey to reverse its decision.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission – who spoke to Erdoğan the day before Turkey abandoned the pact – tweeted on Sunday: “Women deserve a strong legal framework to protect them”, and she asked all signatories to ratify it.
Conservatives in Turkey claimed that the letter damaged the family unit and encouraged divorce, and that its references to equality were being used by the LGBT community to gain wider acceptance in society.
The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, one of Erdoğan’s main rivals, tweeted that the decision “hampers the struggle that women have been fighting for years”.
Gökçe Gökçen, vice president of the main opposition party CHP, said that abandoning the treaty means “keeping women second-class citizens and allowing them to be killed”.
“Despite you and your wickedness, we will stay alive and bring the convention back,” she said on Twitter.
Even the pro-government Association of Women and Democracy (Kadem), whose vice president is Erdoğan’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 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 killed this year, according to the human rights group We Will Stop Femicide Platform.
“The Istanbul convention was not signed under his command and will not leave our lives under his command,” tweeted the platform’s general secretary, Fidan Ataselim.
The country was also shaken by a video widely publicized on social media earlier this month, showing a man beating his ex-wife on the street. The man was arrested on Sunday and Erdoğan announced that a parliamentary commission would be created to examine legislation to combat violence.
Human rights groups accuse Erdoğan of choosing Turkey, mostly Muslim but officially secular, on an increasingly socially conservative course during his 18 years in power.
After a spectacular LGBT 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.