Turkish court says Erdogan had right to annul women's treaty

Turkey's top court on Tuesday ruled that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had the right to pull his country out of a European convention against gender-based violence.

Rights groups and Western governments voiced shock and outrage when Erdogan cancelled Turkey's membership of the Istanbul Convention in an overnight decree last year.

Erdogan's political opponents argued the president did not have the power to unilaterally cancel membership of an international agreement.

Turkey became the first country to sign the convention in 2011 and ratified it by vote in parliament the following year.

But the top administrative court on Tuesday rejected a request to annul Erdogan's decision in a case involving testimony from leading women's rights advocates and legal scholars.

The court's legal reasoning was not immediately released to the press.

But a lawyer representing the We Will Stop Femicide Platform rights organisation said the 40-page ruling referred to the president's "right of discretion" when interpreting Turkey's laws.

"It is terrifying from a legal persepective," lawyer Ipek Bozkurt told AFP. "This erroneous decision should have been stopped by the court."

The treaty - now enacted by dozens of European countries - requires member states to adopt domestic legislation and strictly punish domestic abuse and gender-based violence.

But Erdogan's Islamic conservative supporters argued that its language promoted LGBTQ rights.