"Under Pressure" by Berfu Ege Söbe
Seeing what my mother went through that day in the car, I promised myself that I
would never leave a woman alone in this situation. Since then, I have become more aware
and sensitive about women’s issues. After all the struggles I have seen women face, I know
that they are being hidden by political pressure. So, the biggest challenge women and girls
face in my country is that their voices are not heard because only a few of them can find
enough support to speak up and the society is built in a way to silence them when they do so.
I didn’t know that this was the day I could never erase from my memory. We were in
the car, my mother and I in the backseat, and my father driving. Everything started with a
small argument among my parents. A few minutes later, my father stops the car next to an
overbridge, unties his belt and turns back to face us. At the time, I am 6 and have never seen
my father’s eyes so sharp, they were burning with a fire I have never seen there before. He
starts punching my mother’s chest, her face. He keeps screaming words that I can’t
understand. All I can think of is “How do I stop this?”. I try to intervene, but my mother is
pushing me away from her, protecting me from the punches coming her way. I start
screaming and he looks at me expressionlessly, sits back down and drives home without
saying one other word. That night, I cried to sleep and made a promise that would change my
life: I would never leave someone alone in this situation without doing anything. But I still
don’t know what my mother did that night, whether she could sleep, whether she was afraid
of what the future could bring. My mother kept quiet about that day until she no longer could,
one year later when my father threatened her with death. She tells me today that those were
the loneliest times of her life. At first, she was hesitant to talk about the years of violence
because people didn’t believe her. She told me that people were trying to judge her more than
they tried to hear and understand what she was telling. However, these didn’t stop her. She
tells me today that she didn’t keep quiet back then because she had a girl to raise and she
didn’t want to raise her in a world like this.
There is a long list of challenges women face in the world, and Turkey has its share.
Femicide is very frequent and one woman is killed each day by either her exhusband, her
stalker, or her boyfriend 1 . Only 2 ministers out of 16 are woman, the working conditions and
raises for women are not fair, and the burden of domestic work and childcare is still on
women. Female sexuality, menstruation, and gender roles remain taboos. Domestic violence
is a big problem. Child marriages still can’t be prevented in eastern parts of Turkey. Rather
than taking the necessary steps to provide social justice, people debate whether pregnant
women should be allowed to walk on the streets because “the fact that they had sex is
obvious” 2 . Accordingly, the biggest challenge millions of women and girls face in my country
is the pressure. The pressure that keeps women from speaking up, that tries to volume down
their voices, and that keeps others from hearing their stories. By blaming women, not
questioning traditional practices, and fearing that women’s stories will reveal the unfortunate
truth about our society, people contribute to this culture of pressure. Thus, women like my
mother fear to speak about what they are going through, and other women keep thinking that
they are alone in the challenges they face. There are also some phenomenal women that speak
truthfully about what happens to them, like my mother did afterwards, despite the people
judging her. However, when these women do speak up, they suddenly get attacked by the
public because the political language and culture feeds the idea that women are to blame. The
culture tends to discredit survivors and the women suffering from challenges.
After what we have gone through, my mother and I have been very sensitive and
observant about these issues. We have spotted and helped many women and families around
us. There are other women who are working to stop sexual assault, femicides, abuse, rape,
inequalities in the workplace and other problems that our society tries to ignore by silencing
women with pressure. However, women already know the solution. We need to start by
sharing our stories and supporting each other. This way, millions of women can understand
that we have each other, even if we don’t have anyone else. After all, in a country where half
the population suffers, no one can ignore the suffering.