ISTANBUL: A Turkish court on Wednesday rejected a prosecutor’s attempts to shut down a leading anti-femicide campaign group on charges of violating administrative laws and “morality.”
The rare court victory for a Turkish rights group came as Ankara vows to mend ties with Western allies after May elections in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan extended his dominant rule into a third decade.
“The court rejected the (petition) to shut down our platform,” the We Will Stop Femicide Platform representative Nursen Inal said.
“We are very happy, but (the trial) should not have happened in the first place.”
Riot police cordoned off Istanbul’s main courthouse and detained two supporters of the campaign group ahead of the closely watched verdict.
Prosecutors had asked the court to close the group for “acting against the law and morality” in hearings that had stretched out for more than a year.
The group, which says it was never presented with an explanation as to which laws it was supposed to have violated, had denounced the charges as politically motivated.
The We Will Stop Femicide Platform has been campaigning against the murder and abuse of women in the mostly Muslim but officially secular nation since 2010.
It became a lightning rod for criticism from Islamic conservatives after speaking out against Erdogan’s 2021 decision to pull Turkiye out of a European convention aimed at combating violence against women.
More conservative members of Erdogan’s ruling party also accused the group of damaging traditional family values by speaking out in defense of LGBTQ rights.
Erdogan himself branded the LGBTQ community “perverse” and repeatedly denounced their supporters during his May re-election campaign.
The We Will Stop Femicide Platform says 403 women were murdered in Turkiye last year and 423 in 2021.
The move to prosecute the group alarmed rights activists, who have long accused Erdogan of backsliding on democratic norms.
Turkiye this year reaffirmed its commitment to resume long-stalled negotiation to join the European Union.
But the bloc’s enlargement commissioner said on a visit to Ankara this month that Brussels needed to see tangible progress on Turkiye’s commitment to “democracy and the rule of law.”
Turkiye drops bid to close leading anti-femicide group
https://arab.news/gva6r
Turkiye drops bid to close leading anti-femicide group
- Rare court victory for a Turkish rights group came as Ankara vows to mend ties with Western allies
- The We Will Stop Femicide Platform has been campaigning against the murder and abuse of women
Israeli military says it struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon
- Lebanon’s state news agency, NNA, reported that Israeli warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes targeting several places in the south
BEIRUT: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in several areas in southern Lebanon, including what it described as a training compound used by the armed group’s Radwan forces.
Military structures and a launch site belonging to Hezbollah were also hit in the attacks, the military added in a statement.
The strikes come less than a week after Israel and Lebanon both sent civilian envoys to a military committee monitoring their ceasefire, a step toward a months-old US demand that the two countries broaden talks in line with President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace agenda.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 that ended more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Since then, they have traded accusations over violations.
Lebanon’s state news agency, NNA, reported that Israeli warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes targeting several places in the south.
