ISTANBUL – Handcuffed and naked, Melek Ipek endured a night of beatings, sexual assaults and death threats from her husband who left her and her two daughters beaten and traumatized. In the morning, after he left and returned home, she took a gun and killed him in a fight.
Ms. Ipek, 31, was arrested after calling the police to the scene in the southern Turkish city of Antalya in January. On Monday, she went on trial, charged with murder and facing a life sentence in what appears to be a politically contentious case for women’s rights in the country.
Women’s rights organizations jumped in to support her, saying she acted in self-defense and had suffered years of abuse by her husband before a long night of torture. If she had received health care and a psychiatric evaluation after the assault, she would not even be on trial, said the Feminist Collective of Antalya in a statement.
For President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of a conservative Islamic movement that defended the traditional family as the Turkish ideal, episodes like Ipek’s case have become an increasingly explosive issue. His opponents accuse him of allowing violence against women to grow during his tenure, and women in his own party, albeit with more caution, are supporting better protection for women.
Right-wing groups of women have pointed to a sharp increase in women’s deaths in the past two decades – almost three a day occur somewhere in Turkey – and impunity for men accused of domestic violence.
According to Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, 266 women were killed in episodes of domestic violence last year. Women’s rights groups say the real number is much higher, citing their own numbers of 370 femicides recorded last year – that is, women murdered by men because they are women – and 171 cases of women who lost their lives in suspicious circumstances. In addition, there are the suicides of women that are barely investigated, they say.
They point to a sharp increase in the murders of women from 2002, when Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party was elected. Murders of women increased from 66 in 2002 to 953 in the first seven months of 2009, according to Sadullah Ergin, Erdogan’s justice minister at the time. The government stopped releasing data on gender-based killings after 2009.
“In Turkey, at least three women are killed every day,” said Berrin Sonmez, a women’s activist and commentator. “More importantly, we see that the murders of women have become more violent.”
Part of the brutality of recent cases amounts to systematic torture, she said.
Ms. Ipek appeared in court on Monday via a video link to the prison. She said she was saddened by the incident and offered condolences to her husband’s family. Crying, she added: “But I want to tell you everything I went through, without being ashamed and scared.”
She said she had been a successful student and dreamed of becoming a math teacher, but that her husband, Ramazan Ipek, had sexually abused her when she was still in high school to force her to marry him.
On the night of January 6, Mr. Ipek, 36, who worked as a driver, beat her with the butt of a rifle and threatened to kill her and her daughters, aged 9 and 7, by firing the gun and shattering the window. beside them, according to their account in the prosecution.
He left the house in the morning and said he would come back to kill his two children and then her. When he returned screaming an hour later, a still-handcuffed Mrs. Ipek picked up her rifle and the gun went off in a fight, she said in her report. He was killed by a single point-blank shot.
Lawyers and activists in Antalya were dismayed by the arrest of Mrs Ipek. They are also concerned that the prosecution describes Mr. Ipek as a family man and accuses Ms. Ipek of choosing to shoot her husband instead of seeking help from the police or neighbors.
“Everyone is judging Melek now: ‘Why didn’t she call the police? Why hadn’t she accused him earlier? Why didn’t she get a divorce before? ‘”Said Gurbet Kabadayi, professor and activist at the Antalya Women’s Counseling Center and Solidarity Association, which offered support to Ipek and his family.
The prosecution cites the fact that Ms. Ipek did not ask for help or protection from the state, or asked for help from her neighbors, either before or during the attack, as evidence of her intention to kill him. She was ordered to remain in prison until the next hearing on April 2.
But activists and lawyers say the police and judiciary in Turkey often fail women in need. Police officers often persuade battered women to return to their husbands, restraining orders are rarely enforced and courts often give reduced sentences for good behavior, which encourages a sense of impunity among perpetrators of the violence, Kabadayi said. In one case, a Turkish court in 2017 acquitted two men accused of helping to kill their sister because of their Western lifestyle.
Political opponents and women’s rights advocates accused Erdogan of encouraging a sense of impunity and the subsequent increase in violence by expressing conservative opinions about the role of women in society and their increasingly authoritarian control over the judiciary and law enforcement.
In principle, Turkey recognizes women’s rights in legislation and in the Constitution, largely because female activists participated in its drafting, said Hulya Gulbahar, a lawyer who is a member of the Equality Monitoring Platform.
“The question is,” she said, “as we saw in the Melek Ipek case, none of the provisions of these laws and the Constitution that are in favor of women are applied.”
In his first decade in power, Erdogan was applauded for instituting democratic reforms as part of Turkey’s attempt to become a member of the European Union. He also hosted and became the first signatory to the Istanbul Convention, the first international agreement to address domestic violence, in 2011.
However, a decade later, women’s rights advocates say they are fighting attempts by Islamists to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, overturn legislation such as articles covering alimony and inheritance rights and reducing the age of consent for women. 18 to 12 years.
“Unfortunately, we are trying to protect what we have already won,” said Sonmez.
When the issue of withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention peaked last year, Erdogan met resistance from women in his own field, including his family.
The Women and Democracy Association, a non-profit organization for women’s rights founded in 2013, of which Mr. Erdogan’s daughter, Sumeyye Bayraktar, is vice-president, spoke out in favor of the Istanbul Convention. Mr Erdogan seems to have shelved the idea of withdrawing.
The women’s association is closely aligned with Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and supports its Islamic ideals, emphasizing the importance for women in the family and in child rearing. But its female members also supported justice for women in marriage and in the workforce.
Nurten Ertugrul, a former party member who resigned after being passed over for a deputy mayor in favor of a man, said it was the wave of support for women’s rights with the Islamic movement that prevented the withdrawal of the Istanbul Convention. Conservative women may not always be able to speak openly, but encourage others to do so, she said.
If the Justice and Development Party “were not afraid of the anger of its own women and the women who voted for them,” she said, “they would have easily withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention”.