21st Century Wire
Ten years ago, on 11 May 2011, the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence was opened for signature in Istanbul and subsequently this human rights treaty has become popularly known as the Istanbul Convention. A year later, 12 March 2012, Turkey became the first country to ratify the convention, and was then followed by 33 other countries in the period 2013-2019 – from Albania and Belgium to Sweden and Switzerland.
Last month, the leader of Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s Party (or CHP) Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu received a rather unexpected honour as a group of 13 LGBT individuals, with a certain Beray Göksu Eroğlu acting as their spokesperson, declared that they had “proclaimed the esteemed Kılıçdaroğlu to be an honorary member of the LGBT family” (12 April 2021). This admittedly somewhat strange act came about after Kılıçdaroğlu had defended LGBT individuals as posing no threat