Turkey Drops to 106th Position in Women, Peace & Security Index

By: WE Staff | Friday, 20 February 2026

• Turkey was ranked the 106th out of 183 countries in the 2025/26 Global Women, Peace and Security Index
• The report is published every two years by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security

In 2025/26, Turkey ranked 106th out of 183 on the Global Women, Peace, and Security Index (WPS Index). Previous cycles had Turkey at 99th place.

This index is produced every two years by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security; the Peace Research Institute in Oslo; and reported on by the Stockholm Center for Freedom.

Turkey's score was 0.664, which falls below the typical developed country score of 0.847 and below the average score of 0.715 in Central & Eastern Europe.

The WPS Index has been produced every two years since 2017. The WPS Index uses 13 indicators to track the status of women and groups those indicators into three categories: Inclusion, Justice, and Security.

The categories are based on education, employment, entry into parliament, and financial inclusion; legal discrimination, access to justice and deaths related to childbirth; and community safety, violence (including intimate partner violence), and violence related to conflict (e.g. from your country being at war with another).

Turkey had the lowest score of female average schooling years per region (7.9) and female safety in the community with 44 percent of females reporting feeling alone at night in the community. Turkey scored close to the lowest level of representation in government or legislature (19.9 percent) or intimate partner violence (12.1 percent).

Denmark had the highest overall score in Edition Five at (.939), Iceland and Norway followed. Afghanistan had the lowest common score at (.279) followed by Yemen and the Central African Republic.

The report states that in many areas across the world there has been a slowing or lack of improvement for adult women's rights and safety as compared to previous assessments (from past years).

Turkey's departure from the Istanbul Convention (often referred to as the Council of Europe's Convention to Prevent and Combat Violence against Girls and Women and Domestic Violence) illustrates a wider trend of changing legal systems regarding equality between genders on many levels.

Withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention in 2021 has caused civil society groups to voice their fears about increasing incidents of gender-based violence. Furthermore, some of President Erdoğan’s supporters have pushed for new domestic laws to protect women from domestic violence.