A woman from Kazakhstan on trial for stabbing her Turkish boyfriend in the heart has said she only grabbed the knife to defend herself from a violent beating after she had confronted him over cheating on her.

Irina Franzen, 30, was living in Bursa, Turkey, with her boyfriend Turan Doner, 39, when she allegedly murdered him by stabbing him in the heart.

She told the court at the beginning of her trial: “He was constantly coming home drunk and inflicting violence on me. I told him that I could no longer continue this relationship and that I would go back to Kazakhstan.”

The waitress, who had moved to Turkey in 2019, said that she eventually did just that but Doner convinced her to go back to Bursa.

Franzen said: “After a while, he called me and told me that he had bought a ticket and asked me to come back.

“He said that he would never raise his hand to me again and said: ‘If I raise my hand to you again, kill me.’

“He said that we would get married and have a happy life.”

The couple began living together in a house in the Yildirim district of Bursa but Franzen said she quickly found out that Doner was cheating on her with her best friend after checking his phone.

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Franzen said that they argued and he began beating her. With her then allegedly stabbing him with a kitchen knife.

She said: “Turan went crazy when he found out that I had searched his mobile phone. I was very scared at that moment.

“Turan got angry because I had tampered with his phone and started hitting me in the head. To defend myself, I took a knife from the kitchen and I wanted to scare him away. I had no intention of killing.”

Stabbed in the heart, he fell to the ground covered in blood.

Franzen screamed for help but Doner was pronounced dead at the scene and she was arrested.

She has been charged with “intentional murder” and faces life in prison.

The defendant claims that she acted in self-defence.

Femicide is a growing problem in Turkey, particularly after the country officially quit the Istanbul Convention in July 2021.

According to data from the ‘Monument Counter’, which is “a digital memorial for women killed by violence” and is updated daily, 393 women were killed by men in 2022, while 386 femicides have taken place in Turkey so far this year.