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Some 8 mln women in Turkey downloaded domestic violence app since 2018

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Widespread fears of domestic violence have driven 7,830,000 women in Turkey to download the Women’s Emergency Support Application (KADES) since its launch in 2018, the private DHA news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a deputy inspector from the Security Directorate General (EGM).

Developed by Turkey’s Interior Ministry, KADES provides women with a hotline to report domestic violence and to ask for the assistance of law enforcement officers, who usually arrive in an average of five minutes.

Vesile Kaplan, from the EGM’s Domestic and Gender-Based Violence Division, told DHA that to date, the application has received 1.48 million reports, with assistance provided to 920,000 women who were victims of violence.

Kaplan explained that the app is designed to be user-friendly both during the download and usage stages. She added that foreigners in Turkey can also activate the app by entering their passport number or the serial number of the document used for entry into the country, followed by an activation code sent to them.

The deputy inspector urged all women in Turkey to download the app, noting that while many may think they don’t need it, unexpected violence can occur at any time or affect someone close to them. She mentioned the app’s importance in potentially preventing acts of violence and saving lives.

The KADES app has been translated into 11 languages and is continuously being updated as needed, according to Kaplan.

She further said that the app has been updated to better serve hearing-impaired users with the addition of a button that notifies authorities and officers of the user’s condition, ensuring more effective assistance.

Femicides and violence against women are chronic problems in Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten almost every day. Many critics say the main reason behind the situation is the policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, which protects violent and abusive men by granting them impunity.

Turkish courts have repeatedly attracted criticism due to their tendency to hand down lenient sentences to offenders, claiming that the crime was “motivated by passion” or by interpreting victims’ silence as consent.

According to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform (Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu), which monitors domestic violence in Turkey, Turkish men killed at least 394 women in acts of domestic violence in 2024, while 259 others died under suspicious circumstances.

The platform states that the only year when the number of femicides dropped was 2011, the year Turkey signed an international treaty, known as the Istanbul Convention, aimed at combatting domestic violence.

Despite opposition from the international community and women’s rights groups, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided on Turkey’s withdrawal from this convention in March 2021. The treaty required governments to adopt legislation prosecuting perpetrators of domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.

Turkey officially withdrew from the Istanbul Convention in July 2021.

Erdoğan claimed at the time that the treaty had been “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality” which he said was “incompatible” with Turkey’s “social and family values.”

A 2022 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report criticized Turkey’s approach to addressing violence against women, pointing out that the government frames the issue in paternalistic terms, seeing women as needing protection rather than promoting gender equality. Emma Sinclair-Webb of HRW noted that this approach undermines efforts to effectively combat gender-based violence.

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