Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on violence against women: an environmental study from Turkey

Abstract

Abstract Background Numerous reports suggest that COVID-19 escalated domestic violence globally. Turkish Medical Association and various non-governmental organizations drew attention to the increased violence against women however there is no study in the literature which shows the changes in domestic violence by nationwide data from Turkey. This study aims to investigate the possible association between violence against women and dynamics of the pandemic. Methods The official website of Turkish Ministry of Health (TMH) was used to maintain the data for weekly number of deaths and new cases of COVID-19 from April 5th 2020 to April 5th 2021. Most updated and accurate reporting of new COVID-19 cases which TMH started to share after November 25th 2020 was chosen for this study. KADES is a smartphone application for women to seek emergency help in case of a domestic violence and created by Turkish Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2018. Weekly use of the terms ‘KADES' and ‘KADES indir' (tr. download KADES) in Turkey were obtained from Google Trends (April 5th 2020- April 5th 2021). Spearman correlation analysis was used to evaluate the possible associations. Results There were moderate-strong correlations between KADES searches and new COVID-19 cases (ρ = 0.692, p-value= 0.001) and deaths from COVID-19 (ρ = 0.521, p-value= 0.000). Strong correlations were found for the association between ‘download KADES' searches and new COVID-19 cases (ρ = 0.640, p-value= 0.003) and deaths from COVID-19 (ρ = 0.629, p-value= 0.000). Conclusions During pandemic, Turkish government tightened COVID-19 restrictions when there was a major incline in the outbreak curve. The results of this study suggest the possibility of increased violence against women in those times. Recently, Turkey pulled out from Istanbul Convention which is a comprehensive legal framework about violence against women. Policy makers should urgently turn back from this decision and provide the safety of the women in Turkey. Key messages Findings of this study suggest a possible increased help-seeking behavior regarding violence among Turkish women during COVID-19 restrictions. Urgent legislations and suitable practices are needed for preventing and combating violence against women during pandemics.