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
Hamas proposes weapons ‘freeze’ in return for long-term truce: leader to Al Jazeera
- Under that phase Israeli troops would further withdraw from their positions in Gaza and be replaced by an international stabilization force (ISF), while Hamas would lay down its weapons
DOHA: A top Hamas leader told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the militant group is open to a weapons “freeze,” but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza.
“The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable to the resistance (Hamas). What is being proposed is a freeze, or storage (of weapons)... to provide guarantees against any military escalation from Gaza with the Israeli occupation,” said Khaled Meshaal in an interview aired Wednesday.
“This is the idea we’re discussing with the mediators, and I believe that with pragmatic American thinking... such a vision could be agreed upon with the US administration,” he said.
The US-sponsored ceasefire deal, in effect since October 10, halted the war that began after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. But it remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of breaches.
The agreement is composed of three phases. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently indicated that it was about to enter the second phase.
Under that phase Israeli troops would further withdraw from their positions in Gaza and be replaced by an international stabilization force (ISF), while Hamas would lay down its weapons.
Netanyahu is expected to meet with US President Donald Trump in the US later this month to discuss the steps forward in the truce.
But the Palestinian militant group has indicated it would not agree to giving up its arsenal.
“Disarmament for a Palestinian means stripping away his very soul. Let’s achieve that goal another way,” Meshaal added.
In the first phase of the deal Palestinian militants committed to releasing the remaining 48 living and dead captives held in the territory. All of the hostages have so far been released except for one body.
In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds of dead Palestinians.
As for the international peacekeeping force, Meshaal said the group was open to its deployment along Gaza’s border with Israel, but would not agree to it operating inside the Palestinian territory, calling such a plan an “occupation.”
“We have no objection to international forces or international stabilization forces being deployed along the border, like UNIFIL,” he said, referring to the UN peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border.
“They would separate Gaza from the occupation,” he added, referring to Israel.
“As for the presence of international forces inside Gaza, in Palestinian culture and consciousness that means an occupying force.”
Mediators as well as Arab and Islamic nations, he said, could act as “guarantors” that there would be no escalation originating from inside Gaza.
“The danger comes from the Zionist entity, not from Gaza,” he added, referring to Israel.
