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When Counting Becomes Political
The withdrawal of political commitment and removal from international monitoring bodies allows states to falsify both data itself and the reality behind the numbers. Data is inherently political and influences the way states measure violence, sometimes resulting in governments reporting lower numbers than non-governmental sources for the same social problem. When governments report numbers inconsistent with non-governmental sources for the same problem, the collection and transparency of data becomes political. This is especially the case regarding the global issue of femicide, which refers to the intentional killing of a girl or woman with gender-related motivation. While much of the conversation around femicide is about why these killings occur or whether the violence is increasing or decreasing, less attention is given to how these incidents are counted. This is significant, as the production of statistics plays a vital role in shaping public debate, media coverage, and accountability.
In 2021, Turkey announced its decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention and claimed that the Convention was being used to “normalize homosexuality” which was “incompatible” with Turkey’s values. The Convention, also referred to as the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, requires member countries to “implement a comprehensive array of practical measures” to prevent gendered-violence and hold perpetrators accountable.1 Turkey withdrew from the convention, leading to a backsliding in women’s protection. Several years following this withdrawal, femicide persists, but official reports remain inconsistent with reports from non-government organizations. The state’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention worsened the already unreliable process of counting and discussing femicide. This further reduced the state’s involvement in producing clear data and shifted the responsibility onto civil society and the media. Consequently, gendered-violence has become both harder to account for and easier to deny.
Counting Violence is not Unbiased
Counting crime is often seen as a technical and unbiased process but, in a political setting, it reflects a government’s decisions regarding what problems deserve attention, and those that do not. Governments decide how a crime is defined, which cases count, and if data is made public in a way that is broadly palatable to its citizens. Because numerical data can serve as a function of government and public policy, the way in which it is gathered and represented is far from being neutral.
This is particularly true for gender-based violence, which has been historically underreported. International agreements such as the Istanbul Convention include frameworks designed to mandate states to collect standardized data on violence against women and to make that data publicly available. In this sense, counting violence is intertwined with political commitment: when a government consistently (and properly) tracks and reports violence, as the Istanbul Convention requires of femicide, it acknowledges that it has a responsibility for tackling it. When a government does not do this, the issue may be minimized if not erased entirely, as seen with the minimization of femicide on a global scale.
Turkey’s Withdrawal and Changes in Official Data
Turkey’s decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention in 2021 marked a shift in how femicide was officially tracked and reported. While the withdrawal did not immediately eliminate existing laws on violence against women, it was a pushback against women’s rights and decreased the transparency of femicide statistics. There is a significant discrepancy between the gender-related killings reported by civil society organizations and those publicized by Turkey’s official state sources. For instance, the data provided by Turkey’s Interior Ministry reported that 309 women were killed due to gender-based violence in 2023 and 276 during the first 10 months of 2024, whereas other non-governmental sources such as the We Will Stop Femicides Platform (KCDP) have indicated that at least 394 women were killed by men in 2024.
The problem of femicide has been further minimized in Turkey through the state’s vague classification of numerous women’s deaths as “suspicious”, raising concerns from the public as these deaths have become increasingly associated with femicides. This is due to heavy speculation that the rise in cases marked as “suspicious deaths” may conceal gender-based violence as the classification determines whether the deaths of these women will be counted in official femicide statistics, which further determines the public portrayal of the severity and frequency of gender-based killings.
Responsibility Shift to Civil Society
As official data became more fragmented, non-governmental organizations, people, and media alike have stepped in to track gendered-violence, filling the institutional gap in the interest of women’s safety. Groups such as the KCDP that document cases that are not consistently reflected in state statistics (by accessing public media information and familial testimonies) play a critical role in keeping femicide visible in public discourse at a time when official reporting is limited or disputed.
However, the reliance on civil society and media monitoring underscores the limits of non-state data production. Unlike government institutions, these actors lack formal authority and depend on publicly available information, which can be insufficient. While civil society’s input helps sustain attention and narrow the institutional gap, it does not fully replace the accountability aspect of transparent state-led data collection.
Counting Shapes Accountability
Inconsistency over femicide statistics further affect the expectations of political accountability. Transparent and consistent data allows policymakers, media, and the public to assess whether existing laws and prevention measures are working. When data is incomplete or contested, it becomes difficult to assign responsibility for ongoing gendered violence and limits the ability to identify patterns, track long-term changes, or demand intervention. This institutional gap appears beyond Turkey, such as in Belgium. Among Belgian statistics, there is no official published data on the gender of the victims of intentional homicide, making tracking and properly addressing femicide a near-impossible task.
In contexts where governments unilaterally withdraw from international treaties that cover gender protections, there are often “adverse consequences” reflected in domestic legislation and the protection of rights – as the withdrawal inevitably impacts the country’s interpretation of individual rights. Without a state subjecting itself to supervision from international monitoring bodies and the subsequent lack of clear numbers, gender-based violence can be reframed as isolated incidents rather than a systemic issue requiring state action. Therefore, what crimes are counted plays a pivotal role in determining what is taken seriously and who is held responsible.
Why this Matters Beyond Turkey
Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention shows how political commitment shapes not only policy but the production of data itself. By removing itself from international monitoring, the state narrowed its role in producing transparent femicide statistics, shifting the responsibilities of keeping track of femicides and sustaining awareness to civil society and the media. While these outlets have kept femicide visible, the absence of consistent and clear official data has made the problem easier to downplay and dispute.
The Turkish case highlights a broader pattern: when governments withdraw from certain political commitments, weakened data collection can undermine accountability and allow systemic gendered-violence to be reframed as isolated incidents. What states choose to count, and leave uncounted, is crucial to shaping public understanding and responsibility.
Edited by Laila Graham
The argument defended in this article is solely that of the author and does not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science, the Political Science Students’ Association, or the McGill Department of Political Science.
Featured Image by Emir Egricesu on Unsplash
- The Committee of Parties, composed of representatives of the Parties of the Convention, is the political body tasked with monitoring member states’ implementation of the Istanbul Convention. Parties are supervised through evaluation rounds, which include a standardized reporting form that parties are “invited” to complete. The methods of evaluation have evolved throughout the Convention’s lifespan, with the most recent update being in 2024: states under evaluation must submit a written report following the three-year limit that parties are given to implement the Committee’s recommendations.
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