Turkish female nurse killed at family health center in Istanbul

Duvar English 

A 33-year-old nurse named Ömür Erez has been murdered at a family health center in the Kartal district of Istanbul on Jan. 20. 

The incident happened at Kartal No. 10 Family Health Center.

The man named Rahmi Uygun came to the center and fired at Erez with a gun. Afterwards, he fled the scene.

One of the witnesses said that the assailant had been harassing Erez for a while now. “She was my neighbor. This bully was constantly threatening her. He fired five shots. He was constantly harassing her on the phone,” the witness Mevlüt Koç was quoted as saying by Demirören news agency.  

The Istanbul Governor's Office later said that the assailant had been caught by the police. 

Femicides have reached record levels in the past decade. In 2008, the first year that the We Will Stop Femicides Platform began tracking femicides, there were at least 66 women murdered by men in Turkey. Last year, according to the Platform, 280 women were killed and 217 women were found suspiciously dead in the country. 

Despite this, Turkey has made moves in recent years to lessen protections for women. In July 2021, Turkey formally withdrew from the Istanbul Convention (the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence), a move that advocacy groups say was a major setback for women in the country. Many of those that perpetuate gender-based violence or killing are also let off with light sentences or even allowed to kill again. 

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