A report drafted by the Umut (Hope) Foundation, a leading advocate of gun control in Turkey, has revealed that at least 347 women were killed in Turkey in the first nine months of 2019.
In these murders the actual number of victims was 425 since in some cases the attackers also killed the women’s family members. Two hundred people were also injured during these incidents.
The foundation’s report also revealed that 20.6 percent of the murders were committed with a rifle and 28.1 percent with a gun while the attackers used “sharp objects” in 27.6 percent of the murders. In 23.6 percent of the incidents the women were either strangled or beaten to death.
With regards to the distribution of the murders across cities, Turkey’s most populated city of İstanbul suffered the highest number of murders of women at 66. Only in the provinces of Artvin, Bayburt, Gümüşhane, Karabük, Muş, Siirt, Sinop and Şırnak was no report of a woman’s murder recorded from the beginning of the year until September.
The report also revealed that at least 2,448 criminal acts were committed with the use of firearms or sharp objects in the first nine months of 2019 and that 1,465 people died while 2,554 others were injured in these incidents.
A total of 596,495 people are licensed to carry firearms in Turkey, while 475,542 others have licenses to own firearms, meaning there are more than 1 million registered firearms in the country and that one out of every 65 people owns a firearm.