Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has said 299 women have been murdered in Turkey to date this year, already above last year’s figure of 280, the Diken news website reported on Friday.
Speaking at a meeting on violence against women on Friday, Soylu said a total of 1,167 women were killed between August 2016 and August 2019, adding that only 76 of the victims were previously put under protection by a court.
He also said the 63.5 percent of the perpetrators were spouses or partners, while 32 percent were relatives.
Sixty-nine percent of the perpetrators had only a primary or middle school education, 18.9 percent finished high school or equivalent and 5.5 percent were university graduates, indicative of an inverse correlation between predisposition to murder and the level of education.
Soylu said that 82.4 percent of the attackers were captured by law enforcement authorities, while 16.2 percent committed suicide following the crimes.
In 72.8 percent of the cases, the scene of the murder was the woman’s home.
Turkey has an average of 3.6 murdered women per 1 million people, nearly twice the average of countries such as UK, France and Japan, according to the minister.