News Center — The increase in reports related to gender-based violence in Turkish cities reflects the widening gap between efforts to protect women and the reality that imposes itself daily. With growing social and economic pressures, fears are escalating that violence cases may turn into an even more complex phenomenon.

The Turkish Women's Associations Federation issued its report titled "Data and Analysis of the Domestic Violence Emergency Helpline – March 2026," which shows that during last March, most of the reports received by the helpline came from women, confirming that psychological and physical violence constituted the largest percentage of reported cases, and that the perpetrators were mostly men close to the victims.

According to the report, the Domestic Violence Emergency Helpline received 247 calls during the period from March 1 to 31. Of these, 62 calls were recorded as new cases, 38 were classified as domestic violence, 27 as spousal violence, 11 as shelter requests, and one as an emergency case. The report noted that women constituted 96.2% of violence victims, while girls accounted for 3.8%.

Perpetrators are men

Psychological violence topped the forms of violence experienced by women at 44%, followed by physical violence at 42.8%. Economic and sexual violence reached 4.7%, while social violence recorded 3.5%. Regarding the distribution of perpetrators, the husband was the most present at 43.2%, followed by ex-husbands at 13.6%, then family members at 11.4%, while ex-boyfriends constituted 6.8% of cases.

In the distribution of calls by city, Istanbul ranked first with 34 requests, followed by Ankara with 9 requests, then Ordu with 6 requests. Requests came from a total of 22 cities. In contrast, it was observed that the total number of calls received by the Domestic Violence Emergency Helpline from October 15, 2007, to April 1 of this year reached 101,576, and these calls were not limited to Turkey but also included 33 different countries.