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Turkish Women Take to Streets to Protest Gender Violence
Protests have spread across Turkey in response to the rape and murder of a young student on a bus in the southern seaside city of Mersin. In Mersin itself, several women chained themselves to railings before they were confronted by law enforcement officers.
Ozgecan Aslan, a 20-year-old student, got on a bus home last Wednesday. Her mutilated corpse was found on Friday and the driver, Suphi Altindoken, confessed to stabbing her to death, chopping off her fingers and then burning her body. Local media reports say that Aslan used pepper-spray in self-defense when Altindoken attempted to rape her, prompting his brutal assault.
Altinkdoken denies the rape charge, despite admitting to the murder. Her body was found dumped in a riverbed.
Violence against women has risen considerably in Turkey since the currently ruling Islamist AK party took over in 2003. Erdogan and his top officials have made several remarks about the role of women their "ideal society." One of the key tenets of Erdogan’s Islamizing vision for Turkish society is the relegation of women out of the political sphere and solely into motherhood.
According to a new report which has just been released by Turkey’s Ministry of Family and Social Policy, 40% of Turkish women suffer from domestic abuse.
It is AKP policies that have encouraged and fostered the hostile cultural environment in which events like this can and do take place.
In July 2014, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said that women should refrain from laughing in public because it’s immodest.
In November 2014 Erdogan drew ire for his comment that Islam defines the role of women as motherhood, adding, “You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood.”
In 2010 he had gone much further, telling a delegation of women’s rights activists “I don’t believe in equality between men and women.”
The proliferation of such attitudes among the elite leads to indifference to and collusion in the oppression of women by those in positions of power. This murder case has seen an outpouring of women sharing their personal stories of oppression and sexual abuse on Twitter.
They have reported the callous indifference of the police to sexual assault, and victim blaming from officers who told one woman who reported her rape: “No wonder if you wear that skirt.”
Erdogan expressed his shock and horror at the murder of Ozgecan Aslan and said he would follow the case. Yet, he also lashed out at protestors, accusing them of exploiting her death for political gain, saying, “They are supposedly protesting by dancing to her death. What is that about? Say a prayer, if you know how to.”
His brief remark shows a knee-jerk hostility to the irreligious and a paranoid eye quick to find fault with any alleged motive.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, chairman of the opposition Republican People’s Party, took issue with Erdogan’s record, saying, “This political administration doesn’t allow women to breathe. They interfere in everything.”
For female protesters on the streets across Turkey, the oppression and abuse have become too much to bear.
Video: Female protesters in Mersin
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