IS VIOLENCE INCLUDED IN LOVE? by Sıla Temiz
Love is a deep connection between living creatures. It is an intense feeling of deep affection. Love is when you can only see through each other’s eyes. Love can occur between two different genders as well as same gender. But “Humans are the only animals that mistreat their female.” as Jack London said. In 2020, more than 300 women were murdered savagely. 97 of them were murdered by their husbands, 54 by their boyfriends, 21 by their ex-husbands and 8 by their ex-boyfriends. Is this your love you talking about in poems? Is this your love which is subject to movies? Is this your love you cannot live without?
In Turkey, women are facing violence. Every day, women lose their last hope to hold on. Women are silenced against violence. Women are captive to the power of men. Age 19. In a public transport, a woman was stabbed several times for resisting rape. Age 27. After a woman was choked by her ex-boyfriend, she was burnt and put in a barrel. Age 38. A woman was stabbed by her ex-husband in front of her daughter. Different women, same endings.
What was the reason behind these murders? Love? We see “Murder of lovers” as headlines in newspapers. Is violence included in love? We are tired and sick of hearing “I did it for love.” What kind of love causes five women to be murdered every day? Love doesn’t mean violence. Love doesn’t mean limitation.
What it means to be a woman in Turkey? Being a woman in Turkey is to continue despite difficulties. It means the inability of making oneself heard against injustice. Being a woman in Turkey means society’s decision about what you should wear. It means resistance to patriarchy. When will it stop? When will we stop seeing another flower fade? When will we let the sun rise? In Turkey, women are murdered. In Turkey, the souls of women are stolen. How long will we condone violence? Aren’t we too late to open our blind eyes? In Turkey, the justice system does not effectively support women who experience violence. It is sufficient for a violent criminal to get good conduct time by wearing only a suit. We are used to hearing “Nothing will happen to me.” from men who use violence against women. It seems that the justice system empowers men. The justice system should support victims, not criminals. The government is guilty as much as criminals. The government made them believe they wouldn’t be punished for what they did.
Who is responsible for violence against women? The government which does not make the laws strict enough is responsible. People who see violence and limitation as love are responsible. People who are silent against violence are responsible. When a woman dies, one possible mother dies too. As Mustafa Kemal Atatürk said “Everything in the world is a work of women.” We didn’t just kill our women, we also killed our future. If women are murdered in a country, ignorance is inevitable no matter how developed it is. How will we say no to violence against women? Istanbul Convention might be a good start. The Council of Europe, Istanbul Convention is a humanrights treaty to prevent violence against women. It is life insurance for women. Although Turkey is the first country who signed the treaty, the treaty wasn’t enforced effectively. 2012 is the year which the treaty was signed and that year the number of women murdered decreased. Another thing we can do is to raise awareness about media. Unrecognizable photos of murderers are shared in the media. The physical appearance of murderers is unknown , let alone their identities. We see the names of murderers written with their initials in the media to protect their reputations. The media should be more consciously aware.
We say no to violence because we say yes to a bright future. We say no to patriarchy because we say yes to Istanbul Convention. We say no to violence they define as love because we say yes to love which makes us happy.