"From Revolution to Suppression" by Merve Betül Artış

Ever since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk started influencing history, women became more and more active in society. Women were incented more and more to get the proper education, role models were promoted, a new civil code was created based on the Italian civil code to ensure laws that protect women's' rights. Turkey was one of the first countries to give women the right to elect and to be elected. That "revolution" in women empowerment was going really well actually. By the 1990s we even had a woman Prime Minister who unfortunately remained the only. 

However, when we look at the status quo in women's' rights, we cannot see a scenario as we would have expected considering everything Atatürk has done. We see a society where women and girls' duties are seen solely as getting married, obeying their husbands unconditionally and keeping their houses "happy". Women and girls are suppressed by their so- called families and policemen to stay quiet in case of harassment or sexual assault. Now they consider these incidents so normal that they just shrug their shoulders and forget about it when they occur or sometimes even blame themselves thinking that they provoked the attacker with their clothing, behaviour or look. 

Women are undermining and condescending themselves, thinking that they are the ones to blame whenever something happens or see them as mindless slaves. We, unfortunately, see these cases on every segment of society, no matter how people are educated they still think that women should be doing all the chores, keeping sexual attacks as her secret, stepping back when a man is around. We can see woman doctors, lawyers, engineers who come home after a hard day's work and prepare dinner for their families and do chores even if they have worked more than their husbands. Neither the woman asks for help nor her husband to do it, and the husband does not offer to do so because the chores are seen as a mandatory duty of the woman, even one that completes her "womanhood". This may be the case for people from a sociocultural segment, however, when we look at less educated parts of society we usually encounter with more heartbreaking situations. 

Young girls are forced to drop out and marry men who are as old as their fathers or grandfathers and are expected to deliver babies when they cannot even take care of themselves. When these weddings are reported to the police, or pregnant children are taken to the hospital the authorities usually opt for concealing these issues maybe because they are threatened, bribed or just do not see these as important problems. 

Women are beaten to death by their husbands or other relatives for petty matters. Maybe because they saluted a man, wore bright colours or just because they existed. Again, when the authorities get complaints from such problems, the reports usually disappear. 

It is a whole another scenario when the attacker is an authority, who should be a person when people are attacked or feeling in danger. Who are people supposed to trust when they face problems, are threatened, the authority who kicks them when they are down? 

It is not like we do not have women who tried to empower women and tell people the importance of gender equality. We talk about them too, they are in the curriculum, commemorate them; we even named the second biggest airport in the country after the first woman pilot, we use her name on a daily basis. But clearly, celebrating the International Women's Day and talking about these women for a few minutes in schools are not enough since these are usually done just to be done. We need to change our mindsets, focus on these issues because we need to realize that when only half of the society improves when the other half is struggling to exist, we cannot improve or grow as a whole.