ISTANBUL: The decapitated body of a woman, whose legs were also cut off, was found in a rubbish bin in Istanbul overnight, Turkish media reported on 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, calling for demonstrators to join two protest marches in Istanbul and Ankara.

Large crowds met at Osmanbey metro station in Sisli, carrying banners and placards reading “Stop male violence!”, “We demand justice for women who are murdered” and “Migrant women are not alone”, NGO footage showed.

“Women will no longer be silent!” chanted the crowd as they marched to the place where the woman’s body was found, their numbers estimated to be over a thousand.

In Ankara, hundreds more marched at a protest called by the Stop Femicides platform, which demanded accountability for the woman murdered in Sisli.

“The perpetrators were so confident nothing would happen to them that they could just leave the body of the woman they killed in a bin in plain view,” Isil Kurt of Stop Femicides said in a statement.

“Even though years pass and cities and names change, violence against women remains the same.”

Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2026