Heavily-pregnant woman dies after Turkey balcony fall, husband held

The 35-year-old woman, who was eight months pregnant, died late on Sunday.

A Sudanese national, she was living with her husband in a fourth-floor flat in the city of Bursa.

Her husband, 37, who was home at the time of the incident with their three-year-old daughter, was taken into custody with police opening an investigation, it said.

The husband told police that his wife had jumped out of the bedroom window.

In his testimony, he told police he met his wife in Sudan and they had been married for five years.

He admitted to solvent abuse, saying the habit often caused fights including one on Sunday night.

Two neighbours also reported hearing sounds of a fight, Anadolu said.

Turkey does not publish figures on femicides, leaving the task to women's organisations that collect data on murders and other deaths under suspicious circumstances from news reports.

Figures from We Will Stop Femicides show that in the first seven months of this year, 215 women were killed or found dead in suspicious circumstances.

Last year, 294 women were killed by men with another 297 dying in suspicious circumstances, such as falling from a balcony -- which is frequently classed by the authorities as suicide or an unsolved death.

Since Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention in 2021 -- an international treaty requiring signatories to promulgate laws aimed at preventing and prosecuting violence against women -- rights groups have pointed to rising numbers of women dying after falls from balconies or windows.

(AFP)