News

Mobile App Helps Turkish Women Fight Domestic Violence

The app has so far been downloaded over 20,000 times, and more than 30 women have used it to seek help.

Published

5 years ago

November 14, 2021

mobile app helps turkish women fight domestic violence

It’s estimated that 1 in 4 women globally have experienced severe domestic violence in their lifetime. For a number of complex reasons, the prevalence of domestic violence is especially high in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

Now, the Turkish Ministry of Interior is trying to use modern technology to help women threatened with domestic violence find help before it’s too late. The government ministry office released an app called KADES (Turkish acronym for Emergency Support Hotline for Women), which makes it easy for women to discretely report potential threats to the police.

“This application seeks to ensure women reach our police forces and receive help when under any threat, with just one touch,” explained Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu. “In any dangerous situation, women can connect to the system at the touch of a button, which will automatically send details of their location to the police”.

According to government statistics, the app has so far been downloaded over 20,000 times, and more than 30 women have used it to seek help. On average, the police arrived in just 5 minutes. The number is so low because the app automatically determines where the distressed woman is located and makes the information available to the police.

Also Read: Reddit Plans To Convert Its Karma Points To ERC-20 Tokens

The Turkish Ministry of Interior would like to see initiatives like KADES help wipe out violence against women completely. “Our President [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] says ‘abuse and violence on women is the biggest crime inflicted upon humanity’. We will continue our efforts until this shame is completely wiped out of our country,” said the minister.

However, government officials in Turkey are well aware that achieving such a lofty goal is extremely difficult and will require a multi-pronged approach, as well as a lot of time. In October 2021 alone, 18 women were killed across Turkey, and the number of less serious incidents is impossible to calculate because many of them go unreported.

News

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

1 week ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.