The woes of Turkish women

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

One in three women in Turkey is a victim of domestic violence. This serious problem forced Ankara to pass a law in protection of women. And mind you, it could've become a really good law, had it not suffered the intervention of prime minister Erdogan.

There are many cases of a girl refusing to marry the husband that her father and brothers have chosen for her, and thus becoming a target of death threats and other forms of harassment by the family. Many of them are forced to flee their families and move to the big city where the chances are bigger that they wouldn't be found. They live under false identity, some are being aided by friends, or women's rights organizations. Some of these cases end in a fatal way, the family chasing the girl and tracking her down, and mutilating or even killing her in the end. It's like a quiet genocide.

Human Rights Watch data shows that 1/3 of the Turkish women become victims of such harassment, violence, or even murder, their husbands and members of the family being the perpetrators. One of the most widespread forms of "punishment" is rape. Especially in the rural areas, where the number of victims is much higher than in the cities.

An average of 5 women die every day in Turkey due to home violence. Often these crimes are presented as "acts of honor" - killing because of wounded family honor. And they don't need much to prompt such an act: for example it's enough to walk around dressed in slightly more "modern" looking clothes... or have an intimate relationship with your boyfriend (who's not approved by the family). It's very much a Medieval patriarchal society, contrary to what the tons of Turkish TV soapies would suggest.

The bad news is that this problem has deteriorated even more in recent years, and today the number of "honor killings" is higher than it used to be. The crimes of this character are like a reactionary response of the more conservative Turkish men who cannot accept the fact that an increasing number of women are asserting their rights in the Turkish society; having an opinion of their own, a life of their own, working jobs that were never women's territory before, and being involved in women's rights movements.

And sadly, the current government is not helping much, either. And no surprise - it has taken a more pro-Islamist and conservative course for years. In March the Turkish parliament adopted a law against domestic violence. Among other things, it was supposed to improve the protection of single women by taking bolder measures against men who've got a restraint order and are banned from approaching a certain woman. Thanks to this law, women in danger would get a chance of starting a new life. This could be crucial for many, for whom lots of ordinary things in life are now impossible - like renting a home, starting a job, even visiting the doctor without fear that they would be recognized on the street and handed over to a brother or father to do whatever they please with her.

The new law could've indeed become a good weapon in the hands of judges across the country in their efforts against home violence. Except in its final version it wasn't what it had been initially planned to be. Because prime minister Recep Erdogan intervened and watered it down significantly. For instance the creation of a special police department for women's protection was dropped out of the bill.

But this isn't the only reason that the women's rights movements are sharply criticizing the PM. What caused even more indignation were a string of statements from Erdogan, like the one where he said that abortion is equal to murder, therefore his government was planning to ban all abortions after the 4th week of pregnancy. As for "honor killings", he chose to be in denial and insist that their number had risen just because the number of reported crimes had increased, not because the actual killings had increased. Except he's ignoring the fact that many women are just too scared to report abuse, so what we see in these reports is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

This new turn of course overall that's supposedly meant to emphasize the conservative family values of the Turkish society, in fact threatens women's rights even more than before. And it pushes Turkey (I think deliberately) further away from the values of a modern 21st century society, and into quite another direction - towards the fundamentalist Islamic world, Iran-style. There's already a significant pushback against this policy, but sadly I remain skeptical about its success.

Comments

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

The honor killing system is so deeply fucked up, and yet so deeply ingrained in the cultural patterns of Turkish and several other neighboring cultures. Do you remember the honor killing in Sweden by that Kurdish father offing his daughter, whose only "crime" was to become a journalist and grow up to not marry, but have a relationship with a Swedish guy. There have been more of them since, but that one became a national issue. At least they get more and more attention, because of how these crimes tend to increase when the culture clashes of a modern society with a broader niche for women and the old patriarchal patterns, come into focus. These are some deeply rooted patterns, and their culture follows them over seas into other countries even.
I was having a really interesting conversation with a Turkish guy back in April when I visited Sweden, and he said bluntly that he didn't think Turkey should be considered for EU membership until they change more dynamics for women's rights and minority rights (he was referring to Kurdish issues here).

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSong.cfm?ID=756985

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

That song pretty much nails it.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So what does modern mean in this context? None of these states and their institutions are older than the 1920s, Turkey included. Most of them have been ruled by secular dictatorships who rely on brutish repression to create a mockery of Western ideals and the West doesn't care so long as it gets a lot of oil and an explosive ticking time bomb always postponed. These are not medieval states, and the old Ottoman Empire was actually less evil than almost all of its successors (with the caveat that this means absolutely very little), so how are we defining modernity? For that matter when societies like Russia and Ukraine have major issues with women's rights and democracy, or societies like Hungary and Romania, this is not given the quasi-colonialist focus on "must help the wimmins" that shows up with regard to Middle Eastern societies, or in the case of Turkey European in every sense except Europe's desperate need to find something to not-be because it has nothing to-be.

Which admittedly makes Europe typical of the West's civilization that is rooted in being not-X, mind.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To be absolutely clear: I am not justifying honor killings. I am simply noting that to claim these traits aren't modern or that Middle Eastern societies aren't Modern is a No True Scotsmen fallacy in a region whose modern history has consisted of a number of Nassers and Husseins and Assads who are not anything like theocrats.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

The modernity of the state doesn't exclude lack of democracy as you have noted yourself. But what I specifically am referring to as "modern" are cultural societal patterns, these are the ones that clash with the old ones, here represented by honor killings. Many, if not most societies have old patterns running alongside new ones, the more democratic a society is, the more you can amend such patterns which are oppressive and often violent. And most definitely *all* societies have or had varieties of these.
So what I'm referring to is not the Turkish state, but the culture of honor killings in a much larger region than Turkey itself, and certainly across state lines. It's an odd and very old, rather violent tradition which stems from rural times, and is not unlike certain patterns of blood honor that for instance were prevalent in the viking era in Scandinavia. (except, it wasn't as directed against women as this pattern is). In the case of honor killings it's a cultural pattern and not religious, as the Koran certainly doesn't support it.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which raises the question of why the OP seemed to indicate the rise of Islamism would come concurrent with a rise in honor killings. Islamists are the kind of guys to blow up traditional Muslim shrines and to treat traditional Islam as a variant of heathenry, not the types to adhere to old customs just because they can.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Well, religious fanaticism can come in waves and have different faces. It's not uncommon that things that were never condoned by any holy scripture, and which is cultural and not religious in origin, is adopted by religious groups and then enforced in times which benefit religious zealots. Turkey has differentiated itself from the region by separating politics and religion in their state structure for many decades, but it is at the same time a highly religious country. Religious traditions that are the root of crime, can still be ignored by politicians, just like oppression of certain minority groups has been. I do think it is an interesting fact that honor crime rate rises at the same time as more Islamist waves in the country do. It would probably be interesting to try to figure out more detailed dynamics as to why, but the OP didn't make it up.

Turkey is an interesting country with many faces, I hope you get to go there in the future, it would be interesting to read your thoughts on it. :)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, Turkey actually emblemizes in some ways the regional Catch-22. It's been ruled by secular dictators for so long that at least part of the problem with it democratizing is that democracy would for obvious reasons have more of an identity with religion than it would in the West outside of say, the old Eastern Bloc.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

oh, definitely, more democracy can have negative cultural effects on crime and oppression. It's an old paradox. Abortion rights were diminished and gun/drug crime went through the roof in the European eastern block after democracy for instance. However, in Turkey there is also the problem with measuring cause. Human rights organizations have a decent idea of effects, when and where, barring some dark area margins, but it's harder to understand how numbers may have been suppressed before and why they are rising right when they are. The democratic process is so different in countries in certain regions, from how people in the west are used to. Even the various parties are so vastly different from their equivalents in other places, even if they carry words with "people's party", "republican", "socialist", "center" etc in their titles, the political reality of what they stand for are usually very different from other parts of the world.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And when the country in question has problems with a terrorist movement that seeks to carve up that country to make another country by means of blowing people up, this also tends to limit enthusiasm for democracy in general. It's the same kind of pattern that occurs everywhere else. Turkey will always have a more difficult time adjusting to democracy so long as the PKK thinks blowing up women and children is an acceptable means to create a Kurdistan.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Listen, I don't like the PKK one bit, they are terrorists and they harm Kurds that are not in line with their wishes plenty more than they harm any other groups. But the PKK may not even have existed if it wasn't for the severely botched attempts by the Kemalist Turkish state to mass evacuate and institute programs of forced Turkification, and a long string of human rights breaches in the 60's and 70's.
Dude, I was an active member of Amnesty for many years, my cell was assigned to several Kurdish cases. There are tons of legitimate reports spanning over decades and decades, and not involving the PKK at all. PKK members compose a small minority among the 18 or so million Kurds in Turkey.

We can go back and forth on the issue of Kurdistan, the Ottoman empire and the Safavid empire, WW I and borders etc etc. It still won't change that the modern state of Turkey made some pretty blatant and horrible "integration" botches which they are paying for to this day. (and still doing, to some extent)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Turkish TV soapies? That would be interesting to watch...

...until the 15th minute.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

he chose to be in denial and insist that their number had risen just because the number of reported crimes had increased, not because the actual killings had increased.

How does that absolve anything? What twisted logic that man has.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Honor killings predate Islamic culture in the region and are an example of a survival of pre-Islamic culture Islam has never fully stamped out. And frankly put, the statement that fundamentalist Muslim societies aren't modern neglects that the system in the Middle East has been under the rule of secularist regimes, often reliant on heavy supplies of money from democracies and Communists alike, for most of the 20th Century and only in the 1970s did fundamentalist Islam emerge as a governing force in the region. It seems that this is related to that selective view of "modern" that identifies modernis with secularism.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And to repeat myself: honor killings are evil. Claiming that societies run by secular dictators embracing the trendy totalitarian concepts of their time and reliant on oil monocrop economies are not modern, however, strikes me as a No True Scotsman fallacy for purposes of self-congratulation as opposed to accuracy.