Turkish Police Use Tear Gas Against Thousands Joining ‘Illegal’ Women’s Day March

Thousands of women in Turkey defied an official ban to hold an International Women’s Day march in Istanbul on Wednesday.

The march, which also criticized the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for its poor response to the deadly February 6 earthquakes, lasted about two hours before the police deployed tear gas and detained at least 30 of the participants.

Istanbul has banned International Women’s Day marches for seven years running, using a variety of pretexts. The ban is usually announced at the last minute, so would-be marchers have little time to protest the decision or organize a response. Istanbul police come down very hard on demonstrators who defy the ban.

This year, the excuses for banning the march were that Istanbul’s famed Taksim square was not a designated protest area, the march might disrupt “public order,” the women might “provoke” certain segments of Turkish society to respond with violence, and terrorists could use the march as cover for an attack.

Amnesty International (AI) on Wednesday rejected all of these justifications and urged Istanbul to not only allow the demonstration but to protect the participants.

“Tonight’s march must be able to go ahead without the bans, beatings and other police violence that have marred previous years. Rather than restricting the march, Turkish authorities must instead enable and protect the marchers as well as take action to put an end to the multiple forms of discrimination and gender-based violence in Turkey,” AI said.

The Istanbul governor’s office ignored these demands, instead shutting down key railroad stations to make it more difficult for marchers to assemble in the Taksim district. The marchers managed to put impressive numbers on the city’s central Istiklal Street, but the police prevented them from reaching Taksim Square.

The Associated Press (AP) noted the demonstrators carried many placards referring to the earthquakes, which killed over 46,000 people. “We are angry, we are in mourning,” read one banner, while another called on the government to “control contractors, not women.”

Much of the Turkish public’s anger about the shocking death toll from the earthquakes has focused on negligent contractors who cut corners on earthquake safety standards, with the indulgence of Erodgan’s government. The government has arrested hundreds of people involved with construction work to assuage this anger.

“Living as a woman in Turkey is already difficult enough, and one of the reasons we are here is … the earthquake … and the people who were left under the rubble,” a demonstrator told the AP.

Another major concern of the protesters was Turkey’s withdrawal from the 2011 Istanbul Convention, which was supposed to give women more protection against domestic violence.

Turkey dropped out of the convention in March 2021 because it was “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality, which is incompatible with Turkey’s social and family values.” 

Erdogan noted that several European Union states had similar concerns about the Convention, and promised to “implement new reforms to fight violence against women” after withdrawing, a promise critics say he has not kept.

The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) released a report on Wednesday that found over 600 women have been killed since Erdogan withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, including three killed on International Women’s Day. The report sarcastically congratulated Erdogan’s AKP party for its “world leadership in violence against women.”

According to various foreign media accounts, the police used tear gas and/or pepper spray to disperse the roughly 2,000 marchers who were halted outside of Taksim Square. Some of the women rushed the riot police shields and scuffled the police, while most left the area.

Turkey will hold presidential elections on June 18 and, by most accounts, Erdogan is facing the toughest challenge of his two decades in power, thanks to public outrage over the earthquakes and the opposition coalescing around CHP candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu.