Turkey's withdrawal from a landmark European treaty protecting women is being seen by rights campaigners as an important setback in combating domestic violence.

It was the first country to sign the Istanbul Convention agreement 10 years ago, but president Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decree has now annulled Turkey's ratification of the treaty which bears the name of its largest city.

It is a "devastating" blow to attempts to stop violence against women, said the Council of Europe's secretary general Marija Pejcinovic Buric.

"This move is a huge setback to these efforts and all the more deplorable because it compromises the protection of women in Turkey, across Europe and beyond," she said.

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The Istanbul Convention states that men and women have equal rights and obliges state authorities to take steps to prevent gender-based violence against women, protect victims and prosecute perpetrators.

Some officials from Erdogan's party have advocated a review of the agreement, arguing it encourages divorce and undermines the traditional family, which they say would be contrary to the country's conservative values. 

Critics also claim the treaty is a threat for traditional family life and promotes homosexuality through the use of categories like gender, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Violence towards women needs to be tackled, say rights groups, with a total of 77 women killed since the start of this year, according to the We Will Stop Femicide Platform, which claims at least 409 women were killed in 2020.

Turkey does not keep official statistics on femicide. World Health Organization data suggests 38 percent of women in Turkey are subject to violence from a partner in their lifetime, compared with about 25 percent across Europe.

Ankara has taken measures such as tagging individuals known to resort to violence and creating a smartphone app for women to alert police, which has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

Turkey's minister for family, labor and social policies, Zehra Zumrut Selcuk, tweeted that women's rights were still protected by Turkish laws and said the judicial system was "dynamic and strong enough" to enact new regulations. 

She also tweeted that violence against women is a crime against humanity and the government would continue to have "zero tolerance" for it.

Turkey was the first country to sign the Council of Europe's "Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence" at a committee of ministers meeting in Istanbul in 2011. The law came into force in 2014 and Turkey's constitution says international agreements have the force of law.

Some lawyers have claimed on Saturday that the treaty is still active, arguing the president cannot withdraw from it without the approval of parliament, which ratified it in 2012.

But Erdogan gained sweeping powers with his re-election in 2018, setting in motion the change in Turkey from a parliamentary system to an executive presidency.

Turkey is not the first country to criticize the accord. Poland's highest court has scrutinized the pact after a cabinet member said Warsaw should quit the treaty due to it being too liberal.