100 reasons to prosecute Erdogan

Since Erdoğan has been in power, violence against women in Turkey has increased by more than a thousand percent. Rape is becoming increasingly normalized. Women are systematically excluded from the political sphere, imprisoned and tortured. Alongside this, women's academic, artistic and professional work is criminalized.

Every woman murdered by the Turkish state and its policies has a face, a story, a name. Each of them is a reason to prosecute Erdogan and raise our voices.

The campaign "100 reasons to prosecute the dictator" was initiated by the Kurdish Women's Movement in Europe (TJK-E) on November 25. 

The aim is to collect 100,000 signatures for a petition by International Women's Struggle Day on March 8. The women's movement demands that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan be brought to justice for his crimes. The petition can also be signed online.

In Turkey, a woman is murdered by her partner or ex-partner every third day. The pandemic has further increased violence against women and girls. over 2,000 women were killed from 2008 to 2017. 

Although the government avoids commenting on the increase in femicides, a recent report by Turkish law enforcement asserts similar numbers, concluding that close to 2,500 women were killed in those same years.

Although Erdogan was already hinting at a shift toward more authoritarian and illiberal policies in 2012, a crucial turning point was the environmental protests, known as the Gezi Park protests, that spread to most of the country in 2013. 

Following these protests, Erdogan decided to consolidate power within his majority, deeply polarizing society and undermining his relations with Western allies. 

A failed coup attempt in 2016 lead to a two-year-long state of emergency, with thousands purged from public service, more than a hundred media outlets shut down. Hundreds of journalists lost their jobs and some ended up in jail for their journalistic activities.