Four hundred twenty women were murdered in Turkey and 508 others died under suspicious circumstances in 2025, according to an annual report released on Friday by the Socio-Political Field Research Center (SAMER).
Based on media reports, the study documented 662 cases of physical violence against women, 1,089 cases of forced sex work, 130 incidents of harassment, 25 rapes and 96 cases involving threats or verbal abuse. along with 170 cases of child sexual abuse.
SAMER said 12.5 percent of the victims were minors, pointing to the extent to which violence disproportionately affects children. The highest number of femicides was recorded in İstanbul (15 percent), followed by Adana (6.4 percent) and İzmir (5.2 percent), while reported rape cases were most common in İstanbul (28 percent), with Adana, Ankara and Eskişehir (8 percent each) also ranking high.
Violence against women remains a pervasive problem in Turkey, where women are frequently killed, raped or subjected to physical abuse, according to women’s rights groups and monitoring organizations.
Critics say policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government contribute to the problem by allowing perpetrators to avoid accountability. Such criticism intensified after Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, formally known as the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence.
The convention is an international accord that requires governments to adopt legislation prosecuting perpetrators of domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation. Despite opposition from the international community and women’s rights groups, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a decree in March 2021 that pulled the country out of the international treaty.
Turkey was ranked 135th out of 148 countries with respect to inequalities between men and women in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2025.