Double Murder of Women in Türkiye Causes National Outrage

By: Deanna Hall, Staff Writer

On October 4, 2024, two 19 year-old women, Ayşenur Halil and İkbal Uzuner, were brutally murdered by 19 year-old Semih Çelik in Istanbul.¹ Çelik first murdered Halil in Eyüpsultan by slitting her throat and less than half an hour later murdered Uzuner on top of the Edirnekapı City Walls by decapitating her and then proceeded to commit suicide.² Çelik had been admitted to five different hospitals for psychological issues.³ Police investigated Çelik’s home and found a charcoal sketch in his notebook of a dismembered woman’s body which resembles the way Uzbener was murdered; they also uncovered a video where Çelik was threatening to kill Uzuner a year prior.⁴ Çelik was obsessed with both victims, something that several people were aware of, to the point that Uzuner’s father had her pulled from school and “enrolled in open education” and despite multiple complaints nothing was done.⁵

Femicide, the murdering of women, is a widespread crime in Türkiye.⁶ Halil and Uzuner’s murders have propelled anti-violence against women protests around the Edirnekapı City Walls since the days following the murders.⁷ Women have started to protest against the rising rates of femicide and gender-based violence at educational institutes across the country, including at Medipol University, where Halil was a student.⁸

The protesters across the country are blaming the government for their inaction, and the policies that allow these men to be around.⁹ One women’s rights organization, the “Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız Platformu” (We Will Stop Femicide Platform) made a statement on X stating that they believe that a man being able to kill two women within half an hour is “the result of impunity policies” and promise to hold any official that neglected their duty accountable.¹⁰

One of the key reasons that causes people to blame the government is the fact that in 2021 Türkiye withdrew from the Istanbul Convention.¹¹ The Istanbul Convention is a human rights treaty that addresses violence against women and deems it as a violation of human rights.¹² The convention aimed to achieve its goal by implementing the four P’s: Prevention, Protection, Prosecution, and Integrated Policies.¹³ The idea is to have the same practices across the convention to protect women.¹⁴ President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan decided to withdraw from the convention because he claimed that it became a “social tension object.”¹⁵ Insisting that the convention did not help prevent any violence, and that violence against women being forbidden within the Islamic religion was enough to prevent it.¹⁶ This however hasn’t been the case.

Halil and Uzuner are not the first women to be murdered by men in their life in Türkiye. Three days before their murders two women were killed by their husbands in two different cities.¹⁷ One, a woman in Antalya was shot by her husband during an argument, and the other one, in Aydin was killed by her husband during a divorce proceeding.¹⁸ In 2023 alone, 315 women were murdered and another 248 were dead under suspicious deaths.¹⁹ Sixty-five percent of these femicides were committed in the victims’ homes.²⁰ In September of this year alone, 34 women were murdered by men, and 20 more died under suspicious circumstances.²¹ As of October 10, 2024, 297 have been killed.²² Forty-one percent of these perpetrators were the victims’ husbands.²³ We need to fight for women and their rights and lessen the violence they experience from men, whether it be their husbands, brothers, fathers, friends, or even strangers.

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