ISTANBUL: A brutally mutilated body of a woman was discovered overnight in a rubbish bin in Istanbul, according to Turkish media reports on Sunday, triggering widespread anger and protests led by women’s rights groups.
The remains, wrapped in a sheet, were found in a garbage container in the Sisli district on Saturday evening after a paper collector searching for recyclable materials alerted authorities, the DHA news agency reported. The woman’s head and legs were missing at the time of discovery.
Police later identified the victim as a 37-year-old woman from Uzbekistan. While her missing body parts had not yet been recovered, investigators reviewing surveillance footage observed two men discarding a suitcase in another waste container. Its contents were not immediately confirmed.
Within hours, law enforcement detained two suspects, also Uzbek nationals, at Istanbul Airport as they attempted to flee the country, DHA said. A third suspect was subsequently taken into custody.
The killing provoked strong reactions from women’s rights organizations, which called for protest marches in both Istanbul and Ankara. In Istanbul, large crowds gathered at Osmanbey metro station in Sisli, holding banners reading “Stop male violence!”, “We demand justice for women who are murdered” and “Migrant women are not alone”, according to NGO footage.
“Women will no longer be silent!” demonstrators chanted as they marched toward the site where the woman’s body was found, with turnout estimated at over a thousand people.
In the capital, Ankara, hundreds more participated in a march organized by the Stop Femicides platform, demanding accountability for the killing in Sisli.
“The perpetrators were so confident nothing would happen to them that they could just leave the body of the woman they killed in a bin in plain view,” Isil Kurt of Stop Femicides said in a statement.
“Even though years pass and cities and names change, violence against women remains the same.”
