Huge petition in İstanbul: I don’t want to die

* Photo: Social media

Click to read the article in Turkish

In order to raise concerns and awareness about male violence and protest Turkey's withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention by a Presidential decision, We Will Stop Femicides Platform (KCDP) has placed a massive petition on the facade of a building in Zincirlikuyu, İstanbul.

Making a statement about the petition of complaint on its social media account, the platform has said: 

"This is just an example of the life struggle waged by a woman saying, 'I don't want to die.' We will enforce the İstanbul Convention so that women will not have to submit petitions over and over again to live."

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'Women will live if petitions are heeded'

The statement of the platform has further said, "Just like the woman who penned this petition, dozens of women, hundreds of women submit these petitions everyday. They wage a struggle at police stations and courthouses to stay alive and to lead a life away from violence."

Noting that "complaints are not taken into account and women are subjected to systematic violence", the platform has said, "For this reason, we wanted everyone to see a copy of this petition. We wanted to show once again how vital the İstanbul Convention is for women."

The platform has also raised concerns that "Even though Arzu Aygün appealed to official authorities for 9 times, Tuba Arslan for 23 times, Nahide Opuz for 36 times and Sevtap Şahin for 69 tines in total, their requests for protection were not taken into consideration and they were killed by the men that they had filed criminal complaints against."

Concluding the statement, the platform has underlined that "if those complaints had been taken into account and İstanbul Convention had been enforced, hundreds of women could be alive today." (EMK/SD)