Outrage in Istanbul after woman's headless body found in bin

The decapitated body of a woman, whose legs were also cut off, was found in a rubbish bin in Istanbul overnight, Turkish media reported Sunday, sparking fury from women's groups. 

Her body was wrapped in a sheet and dumped in a rubbish container in the Sisli district where it was discovered on Saturday evening by a paper collector looking for items to recycle, the DHA news agency said. 

Investigators identified the victim as a 37-year-old Uzbek national. 

They were not immediately able to find the victim's head or her legs but while reviewing security camera footage, spotted two men dumping a suitcase at a different bin. It was not immediately clear what it contained.

Hours later, police detained two suspects, also Uzbek nationals, at Istanbul Airport as they were trying to leave the country, DHA said. They later arrested a third suspect. 

Women's rights groups expressed outrage and called for protest marches in Istanbul and Ankara at 4pm (1300 GMT) to demand action against femicides. 

"We don't yet know the murdered's name, but we know this crime is the result of male violence!" Feminists Against Femicide wrote on X, pledging to "take our anger to the streets so that not one more is lost".

Sisli's jailed mayor Resul Emrah Şahan, who was arrested around the same time as Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in a crackdown widely seen as politically motivated, said such murders were a "major social problem".

"Femicides are turning into an ever-growing massacre through impunity, negligence, and silence," he wrote on X, demanding coordinated action to tackle the issue. 

Turkey does not collate official figures on femicides, leaving the job to women's organisations which collect data on murders and other suspicious deaths from press reports. 

Figures compiled by We Will Stop Femicides show that in 2025, 294 women were killed by men and 297 women were found dead under suspicious circumstances.