Femicide Should Be a Wake-Up Call for Turkey

“City upon a hill,” I heard for the first time when I was at my history class, learning about United States politics.

“Cool,” I thought and wondered what we would call my country, Turkey.

Istanbul is also known as the “City on the Seven Hills” as the Byzantine Empire built the city on seven hills following Rome’s model. “We might use this epithet as representative of Turkey,” I considered. Regardless of the variations, my ideas related to this nation were positive — associated with joy, kindness, and pride.

With despair and disgrace now, I have to say that my homeland is a city upon femicide.

Turkey is the country where I was born, where I embraced my family, where I laughed with my best friend, and where I tasted my first love. This nation offers me no place within 783, 562 km², and vast seven regions.

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According to the annual report of We Will Stop Femicide Platform, men murdered 474 women in Turkey in 2019. Women’s desire to leave their partners or divorce, their rejection of marriage proposals, their male partner’s jealousy, and matters of “honor” were some of the reasons.

Her husband stabbed 38-year-old Emine Bulut in front of her 10-year-old daughter. We mourned with the video recorded during the murder, where Emine called out, “I do not want to die,” while her daughter cried: “Please, mom, do not die!”

32-year-old Gulseren Yilmaz, a mother of two children, was stabbed 14 times by her husband due to her divorce demand.

19-year-old Guleda Cankel was choked with a cable by her boyfriend because she wanted to break up. After the murder, he shared a post on social media saying, “Live the moment, do not postpone to be happy, you won’t die when you want to,” and wrote the date and time he killed Guleda.

We were petrified.

48-year-old Fatma Hulya Yildiz was choked with a nylon bag and beaten to death by her husband, although she got a protection order and temporary debarment.

Last week, 27-year-old Pinar Gultekin’s corpse was found in a barrel after her boyfriend burnt her body and poured concrete into the barrel.

Emine, Gulseren, Guleda, Fatma, and Pinar were a few of several hundreds of victims in Turkey. According to the June report, men killed 27 women, and 23 women were found suspiciously dead.

Although Turkey was the first country to sign the Istanbul Convention, which combats violence against women and domestic violence, authorities fail to implement legal norms. When several individuals protested against the government, which could not take necessary measures, the interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, said: “Criticisms will not bring (women) to life. It does not mean that everyone in Turkey faces security problems.”

On the contrary, everyone lives in fear for their life in this country while the state does not protect them.

In Turkey and elsewhere, men keep murdering women due to the absence of legal protection. Murderers believe that they can secure reduced sentences if they use the pretexts of “honor, family, and masculinity.”

As Canan Gullu, the head of the Turkish Federation of Women’s Associations, said, “the reason for violence increasing is that the judiciary and security forces are not using the available acts.”

In Turkey, women die because the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told that “women cannot be equal to men for it goes against their nature.”

In Turkey, women do not have legal protection and security of their lives either physically or mentally because the politician, Ayhan Sefer Ustun, stated that “a woman should not have an abortion if a man rapes her. The abortion is hideous than the rape itself.”

In Turkey, women cannot have integrity because the physician and politician, Mehmet Muezzinoglu, specified that “women should not focus on any career prospects than the career of motherhood as it is their destiny.”

Whereas gender inequality is a national, cultural, and political crisis of Turkey, the government considers withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention.

The Istanbul Convention aims to “protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence” by promoting “substantive equality between women and men.”

Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy chair Numan Kurtulmuş said that “the thesis of ‘domestic violence would increase in the absence of the Istanbul Convention’ is wrong. Equality of opportunity for women and men is currently one of the most fundamental issues of our custom within the Turkish law system.”

As a woman of this country, I assure you that we have never witnessed the equality of sexes.

Patriarchal structures deprive women of individual, reproductive, and sexual rights. In the absence of this legal protection, women will slowly fade away like snowflakes.

The statistics of femicide aside, women suffer from physical and mental oppression in patriarchal structures.

A woman, threatened by her husband, seeks protection from the state only to hear: “It happens within marriage. Go back to your husband.”

Fathers give several girls to older men in the Eastern parts of Turkey, and the government justifies the act, let alone protecting these girls.

Women are humiliated when they desire to pursue careers with the question that “Are chores not enough? You have to be a mother.”

Women are asked by the state to marry their rapists to reverse the damage by exploiting women’s rights, integrity, and freedom.

With each death news, slacktivism begins on social media accounts only to last for a few days and restart with the next murder.

Many people believe that they have done their parts after a few posts on Instagram stories. How can we depend on a tenuous image that annihilates itself after 24 hours to solve the cruel violence unfolding in the world?

Social media is indeed efficient in spreading knowledge and reaching out to more individuals, but slacktivism also causes individuals to withdraw from collective actions and power.

So, I’m asking each of you. How will you take necessary actions to change this course towards domestic violence, marital rape, and women’s oppression?

How will you protect women who cannot have equal opportunities and rights with you?

How will you prevent unheard cases of violence that revolve around your country and world?

How will you sleep in your bed after #PinarGultekin was burnt to death in a barrel?

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To all women who cannot breathe, literally or metaphorically.