The year 2025 began with the government’s declaration of the “Year of the Family.” Official rhetoric emphasized strengthening the family institution and protecting society. However, developments throughout the year showed that this discourse rendered women’s individual rights invisible and brought policies targeting women to the forefront.
Figures recorded by November showed that 569 women had been killed during the year, while 287 women died under suspicious circumstances. This picture clearly revealed how the “Year of the Family” narrative stands in stark contradiction to the reality of women’s right to life.
Women framed solely through fertility rates
Throughout the “Year of the Family,” fertility incentives and population policies were brought to the forefront. Interest-free marriage loans, birth incentives, and family support packages positioned women solely as childbearing subjects responsible for childcare. Within this policy framework, these forms of support were put into effect. Women’s organizations emphasized that such policies define women only through fertility, rendering their labor and individual rights invisible. While the state broadcaster TRT and pro-government media outlets portrayed the “Year of the Family” as a project to strengthen society, the rise in femicides and the targeting of women exposed a clear contradiction between this narrative and lived reality.
Impunity persisted despite Law No. 6284
One of the most fundamental issues threatening women’s right to life in 2025 was the systematic failure to enforce the law. Despite Law No. 6284 remaining in force, women’s organizations repeatedly stressed in their reports that protection and restraining orders were not implemented effectively, and that law enforcement and the judiciary often adopted a “reconciliatory” approach in cases of male violence. Many women were left unprotected despite filing multiple complaints, while some were killed by men against whom restraining orders had already been issued. This picture clearly showed that the existence of the law on paper does not amount to an effective guarantee for women.
Reports by bar associations’ women’s rights centers and the Human Rights Association (IHD) documented numerous cases in which prosecutors failed to pursue investigations on the grounds of “lack of evidence,” while law enforcement officers attempted to dissuade women from filing complaints by invoking the rhetoric of “family unity.” The legal vacuum created after Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention deepened further in 2025. The state’s shift toward prioritizing the family and men over the protection of women turned impunity into a structural problem. Women’s organizations assessed this situation with the conclusion that “male violence is not isolated, but political.”
Political pressure on women politicians and journalists continued
The year 2025 also saw women directly targeted in the political sphere. As part of operations against the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK), a total of 52 people were detained in 2025, including at least 12 women among politicians and activists. In operations targeting municipalities run by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), women mayors and municipal council members were also taken into custody. These developments were widely assessed as part of a pattern of systematic pressure aimed at women’s political representation.
The situation was even harsher for journalists. According to a January 2025 report by the Mesopotamia Women Journalists Association (MKG), four women journalists were arrested, while an August report stated that five women journalists remained in detention. Data from Punto24 showed that 103 journalists were put on trial within a three-month period alone, with women journalists involved in a significant share of these cases. Women journalists faced intensified and multi-layered pressure both because of their professional activities and their gender.
The IHD’s 2025 women’s rights report detailed widespread rights violations faced by women in prisons. The report highlighted that overcrowding forced women to sleep on the floor, hygiene conditions were inadequate, and serious obstacles existed in accessing health care. It also noted that the legal vacuum created by the termination of the Istanbul Convention, combined with the “Year of the Family” discourse, further weakened women’s right to life.
The report additionally addressed women’s unemployment and inequalities in employment within an ideological framework, underlining that state policies positioning women primarily within the family continue to restrict their presence in the public sphere.
Narin and Rojin Kabaiş cases continue as examples of impunity
In 2025, several cases in Kurdistan in particular laid bare policies of impunity and the state’s systematic violence. Incidents that became emblematic in the public eye made the practice of impunity more visible. One of the most striking examples was the case of Rojin Kabaiş, a student at Van (Wan) Yüzüncü Yıl University, whose body was found on the shore of Lake Van 18 days after she went missing in 2024.
During the investigation, the failure to examine phone records for months, attempts to close the case, and the rejection of a parliamentary motion calling for an inquiry deepened concerns that the perpetrators were being protected. Despite the presence of DNA belonging to two different men on Rojin’s body, the investigation was not pursued, exposing the culture of impunity in its starkest form. Although a renewed investigation was launched following public pressure, the overall picture showed that women’s right to life is not effectively protected by the state and that perpetrators are systematically shielded.
Narin Güran was killed in 2024 at the age of eight in the Bağlar district of Diyarbakır (Amed). The silence that followed the murder in the village was widely interpreted as a reflection of patriarchal pressure and a climate of fear. One year on, the question of “why was she killed?” remains unanswered, laying bare the continuity of state policies that fail to protect children and sustain a culture of impunity. Narin’s killing has been discussed as one of the most painful examples of a system that disregards children’s right to life, and as an ideological reflection of a structure in which women and children are rendered invisible together.
Both cases have framed the struggle for women’s right to life within an ideological context. The discourse that sanctifies the family was revealed as an empty ideological construct insofar as it fails to protect the lives of women and children. The state’s claim to protect the family and men was met with silence when women’s and children’s right to life was at stake.
Women in Kurdistan faced layered and overlapping challenges
In 2025, numerous reports published across Kurdistan revealed that women were confronted with multiple, intersecting forms of oppression. Reports by the women’s commissions of IHD in Diyarbakır, Mardin (Mêrdin), Batman (Êlih), Hakkari (Colemêrg), Siirt (Sêrt), and Van, along with reports from bar associations’ women’s rights centers and the Tevgera Jinên Azad (TJA), demonstrated that women face grave threats not only to their right to life, but also to their economic and political freedoms.
According to the 2025 report by the IHD Diyarbakır branch, incidents of violence against women between 1 November 2024 and 1 November 2025 were documented in detail. The report stated: “Women were most often killed by their fathers, sons, or husbands. Many were murdered because they wanted a divorce or because of an argument. Some women were killed in their sleep, others simply because they did not bring water.” These findings clearly showed that violence threatens women’s lives even in the most ordinary moments of daily life.
The 2025 report of the Mardin Bar Association Women’s Rights Center noted that 183 women fell victim to systematic violence, abuse, and murder in the first months of the year. Center Chair Başak Ayyıldız underlined that most of these women were killed by men closest to them (husbands, former husbands, fiancés, fathers, or brothers) highlighting that domestic violence constitutes the most widespread and severe threat facing women in the region.
In Hakkari, an IHD women’s rights report emphasized that following the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, women were left unprotected against violence, facing both domestic abuse and discrimination in public spaces. Statements from the Siirt Bar Association likewise drew attention to the obstacles women encounter in accessing justice and the discriminatory attitudes they face throughout judicial processes.
In Van, the 2025 report of the Wan Star Women’s Association presented concrete data showing that women are struggling with poverty and inequality. Eighty-four percent of women surveyed said gender inequality was the main challenge in their lives. Meanwhile, a report by the Van Bar Association covering 2024–2025 recorded that 2,299 women and children were targeted in various crimes over a 21-month period, laying bare the scale of violence in the region.
Despite differences in focus, all these reports converged on a shared conclusion: women are systematically deprived of economic independence and lack effective public protection mechanisms against violence and discrimination.
Yet despite this bleak picture, hundreds of women took to the streets in Batman during a march organized by TJA on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, under the slogan “A democratic society for a life free from violence.” In its statements, TJA stressed that women’s right to organize is systematically obstructed; women’s centers in municipalities have been shut down, and pressure on women’s political representation continues to intensify.
Women’s poverty driven by family-centered policies
According to a 2025 report by DISK-AR, the rate of women in registered, full-time employment remained at just 19.7 percent, compared to 49.1 percent among men. Broadly defined unemployment among young women reached 48.9 percent, underscoring the particularly fragile position women face in the labor market at an early age. The same report put the overall rate of broadly defined female unemployment at 39.4 percent.
Data from Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) and its “2025 Household Labor Force Survey” showed that while the narrowly defined unemployment rate stood at 8 percent, the broadly defined unemployment rate rose to 29.6 percent. The figures were higher for women, with the survey also highlighting that women experience significantly longer job-search periods than men.
Reports published by women’s organizations working on poverty and social policy revealed that women’s poverty is not driven solely by unemployment but is also directly linked to the ideological framework of family-centered social policies that confine women to the domestic sphere. The lack of adequate childcare and care services severely restricts women’s access to full-time and secure employment, pushing many into low-paid, precarious, and non-unionized jobs.
Migrant and refugee women face invisible labor and unprotected lives
The situation for migrant and refugee women in Turkey worsened further in 2025. Reports by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Turkey and the Migration Monitoring Association revealed that Syrian, Afghan, and African women were increasingly pushed into low-paid, insecure, and unregistered work. Domestic labor, textile workshops, and agricultural fields continued to be the areas where migrant women’s labor was most heavily exploited.
Women’s organizations also noted that migrant women face severe barriers to accessing justice when subjected to violence. Language barriers and uncertainty surrounding legal status often prevent them from reaching complaint mechanisms and protection measures.
This situation made visible a multi-layered sphere of exploitation in which class-based and gender-based inequalities intersect. Women’s organizations stressed that the rights violations experienced by migrant women are not “exceptions,” but rather the deliberate outcome of existing migration policies.
The earthquake was not merely a “natural disaster” for women
Despite the time that has passed since the 2023 earthquakes, women living in the disaster-affected region continued to face largely unresolved problems in 2025. Reports by the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV) titled Human Rights Monitoring Reports in the Earthquake Region (2023–2025), along with women’s rights reports on the earthquake region published by IHD, and Violence and Security Reports for Women After the Earthquake prepared by Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter Foundation and the Women’s Coalition, revealed that women in temporary housing areas are still grappling with serious security, health, and hygiene problems.
The lack of safe spaces for women has increased the risk of violence, while field reports by women’s organizations emphasized that women’s unpaid care labor in the earthquake region has intensified. At the same time, social support and protection mechanisms have remained inadequate. In this sense, the earthquake was assessed not merely as a “natural disaster” for women, but as a structural crisis that laid bare the state’s failures in social policy.
Women continued to resist throughout 2025
Throughout 2025, women’s organized resistance against the state’s family-centered, conservative, and repressive policies continued uninterrupted across Turkey. In response to the discourse promoted under the declaration of the “Year of the Family,” which sought to confine women to the home, fertility, and relations of obedience, women raised their objections in the streets, courtrooms, universities, and digital spaces.
Actions held throughout the year, particularly on 8 March, International Women’s Day, and 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, were not limited to symbolic dates. Women took to the streets demanding justice after nearly every femicide. Demonstrations in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Diyarbakır, Van, Mardin (Mêrdîn), and Batman shared a common emphasis: the state does not protect women but instead reproduces male violence through policies of impunity.
For the Kurdish women’s movement, 2025 was a year in which both repression and resistance intensified. Women’s institutions shut down under trustee policies, equality units dismantled in municipalities, and the liquidation of women’s policies directly targeted women’s political gains. Despite this, the TJA, bar associations’ women’s rights centers, and local women’s organizations continued to weave the women’s struggle into a political line grounded in the principles of a “democratic society” and a “free life.”
Women raised their voices not only against violence, but also against the trustee regime, militarism, and policies of denial. This line of resistance once again made visible that the women’s struggle is not merely a “demand for rights,” but also a struggle for democracy itself.
In conclusion, resistance continued
The year 2025 was recorded as one in which rights violations against women deepened in Turkey, violence increased, and state policies proved inadequate in protecting women’s lives. The discourse of the “Year of the Family” functioned as an ideological screen in the face of women’s right to life, freedom, and equality. Yet women, drawing strength from the accumulated experience of the feminist movement in Turkey and the Kurdish women’s movement, refused to accept this ideological encirclement. They continued their resistance in the streets, in courtrooms, in prisons, and in every sphere of life.