Man kills, dismembers and then throws his wife in the trash in Istanbul

A man confessed to killing and dismembering his wife in Istanbul's Çengelköy district on Wednesday, adding to Turkey's woes over violence targeting women.

The country was shaken last week when the charred body of a young university student was discovered in the southern city of Mersin. Özgecan Aslan was beaten, stabbed, had her hands cut off and burned, by the driver of a minibus she was traveling on.

On Wednesday, the body parts of Kübra Kart, 42, were found in a garbage dumpster in Çengelköy on Istanbul's Asian side. The brutal murder was revealed when her husband Tahir Kart reported to a police station that his wife was missing. After the disappearance, his brother discovered blood stains at home and notified police. Police interrogated the husband and the suspect confessed that he stabbed his wife on Feb. 16 and dismembered the corpse before dumping the body parts he loaded to a cart, into a garbage container near his home. Officials said the suspect, who has been married to the victim for 17 years had suffered from schizophrenia for 11 years and killed his wife in a bout of rage. The suspect may be handed a reduced prison term or can be ordered to be confined to a mental hospital due to his illness, according to legal experts.

The incident joined a long list of lethal cases of domestic violence that was brought into the spotlight by wider media coverage in recent years. Domestic violence, although common, used to be played down by authorities in the country until recently. A string of murders by husbands and boyfriends brought the plight of women back to the spotlight and the government has pledged to step up measures for the protection of women under the risk of domestic violence including a better tracking system for spouses with tendencies to violence.

A report from the Family and Social Policies Ministry shows that four in every 10 women in Turkey are subjected to physical and sexual violence by their husbands, fiances or boyfriends at least once in their life. The report says over 17,000 women applied for police protection against abusive spouses in 2014.