A year of elections which already promise to be very tense, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is stepping up the repression of his opponents within civil society. In courts under pressure, cases and convictions multiply. This Wednesday opens the trial for the dissolution of the main feminist association in the country.
With our correspondent in Istanbul, Anne Andlauer
It is an association which bears its primary objective in its name: We will stop feminicides “. For twelve years, the association has mobilized and demonstrated against violence against women, and supports the victims. But this Wednesday, in court, it is her existence that she is defending. She faces a lawsuit for activities contrary to law and morals “.
” We only learned in April that a lawsuit was being opened against us, but an investigation had been ongoing since 2016, explains Fidan Ataselim, the general secretary of the association. It started when groups of men complained about our activities to the authorities. They claimed that we were immoral, that we propagated homosexuality, that we destroyed the structure of the Turkish family under the pretext of defending women’s rights, or that we supported terrorism. »
Repression increases as elections approach
The prosecution took action and a judge opened a trial. Fidan Ataselim sees this as a new stage in the repression of civil society, a repression that is far from being limited to the feminist movement: “ It is clear that the pressures increase as the elections approach. I fear that unfortunately, by then, the government intends to fuel a climate of fear against all the fringes of civil society who oppose it. »
The elections Legislative and presidential elections are scheduled in a year, in June 2023.
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