ISTANBUL, Turkey (AFP) — Police detained some 200 demonstrators in Istanbul late on Saturday after more than 3,000 women marched peacefully through the city centre under tight security to mark International Women’s Day, organisers said.

For years protests have been banned in the city’s central Taksim Square, which is habitually fenced off with barriers, but the authorities have in recent years tolerated rallies nearby albeit under a heavy security presence.

The Feminist Night March rally began at sunset near Taksim Square, with many demonstrators wearing purple and waving banners with slogans including “we won’t be silenced, we’re not afraid and we won’t obey” and “long live our feminist struggle”.

Although the march ended without incident, organisers said police then started rounding up a number of protesters, posting footage showing officers roughly dragging several demonstrators out of the crowd.

“After the #FeministNightMarch finished and the crowd dispersed without incident, the police started to detain our friends in an act of provocation,” the march organisers wrote on X.

“Nearly 200 women were unjustly detained on March 8!” they added.

There was no immediate comment from the authorities.

Earlier, several hundred demonstrators had gathered for a protest in the Kadikoy neighbourhood on the Asian side of the city, also waving banners as they marched through the streets.

“With our demand for an end to violence against women, for the ratification of the Istanbul Convention against femicide… and for social policies that don’t place the burden of care on women, we are pursuing our March 8 struggle for democracy, equality, peace and fraternity,” Arzu Cerkezoglu, chairwoman of the DISK trade union, told AFP.

She was referring to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 2021 decision to pull Turkey out of the Istanbul Convention, which requires countries to set up laws aimed at preventing and prosecuting violence against women.

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.

According to figures gathered by the We Will Stop Femicide Platform rights organisation, at least 1,318 women have been killed by men since Turkey withdrew from the convention in March 2021.