WOMEN IN TURKEY by Leyla Ilıcalı
Turkey is one of the developing economies of the world, where there is still a big social and cultural gap between the people living in the east and the west. There is a certain heritage that is carried from one generation to the other. The group that suffers from this heritage is the Turkish women , who face all sorts of suppression. Among the many challenges that women face in Turkey, child marriages and honor killings are the most common.
It is an unfortunate fact that many female children are deprived of crucial
rights and experiences that the constitution grants them. In some rural parts of the Anatolian region of Turkey, young girls who are between the ages of 13- 17 are being forced to marry men, who are chosen by their families. By marrying at such a young age, these girls lose their opportunity of education and appropriate adolescence experiences. The young women who become mothers in their early adolescence are expected to take care of their babies and cook meals for the household. They are seen as their
husbands’ property, meaning they are “supposed” to fulfill their all the requests of their husbands, and if they disobey or neglect their duties, they are beaten and alienated. After marriage, these young girls give birth to children, and sadly, these children are preferred to be boys. Despite the fact that the gender of the babies does not depend on the mother biologically, men blame it on women and keep them responsible for their children’s genders. Unfortunately, these young mothers and wives endure all that unfair treatment that the culture imposes on them and continue the cycle.
Another noteworthy problem women encounter in Turkey is violence, more specifically honor killings. Unfortunately, hardly a day goes by without reading a headline about the murder of a woman by her husband/ boyfriend/ brother/ father. Since 2010, at least 237 women have been reported to be murdered even though they had informed the government regarding their situations. The reasons for their murders include the ingrained male dominance, moral values as well as lack of legislation to protect women. According to the national Turkish press, approximately 62% of females have been murdered at the hands of male acquaintances, often being family members who were in the belief of their families having been dishonored. According to tradition and customs, these women are expected to refrain from a lifestyle that would dishonor their family. Otherwise, they have to face the consequences. How can a woman bring honor to her family, though? Only if a “morally”ideal woman in Turkey “saves herself for marriage”, does not have multiple past love interests, covers herself “evenly”, does not have any strong opinions on something, and does not laugh loudly as it is “inappropriate”, is she “well behaved” and saved from violence. These statistics show how grim the reality is. Only in the year 2019, 470 women were murdered in Turkey by men. In 2020, 474 women were murdered. Even in our modern day, there is a yearly increase in the rate of women killings. It is a shame to observe that a woman walking alone late at night wearing shorts or mini skirt may be a potential victim for violence. A question may arise as to the reasons why these crimes are not prevented. These crimes cannot be prevented because the convictions are not deterrent due to extenuating circumstances. Another reason why these unacceptable treatments women have to confront is the lack of representation of women in upper positions and the political world. The cause of the low level of education in women links back to the traditional perception of a “morally ideal woman” as a wife and mother. There are very few women who have become university presidents. Similarly, in the Turkish parliament, only 17% of it consists of women. Most multinational companies choose to have male CEOs and CFOs, which prove that education has not corrected the prejudice and discrimination in all walks of life. We live in a country where men are treated as superior and women are expected to look up to them. The normalization of suppressing women is even visible in the Turkish language itself, which is a rich and metaphoric language having words originating from a variety of languages such as French, Arabic, and Persian. It has multiple idioms in which women are being belittled. Some of them are translated as “the female bird creates the nest” and “a woman's place is her husband’s side”emphasizing the place of a woman is her house and nowhere else,“a husband can beat his wife and love her” undermining domestic violence and categorizing women as husbands’ property.
Having elaborated on the challenges Turkish women face in their lives, it can be evident from the Turkish language only how belittled women are in Turkey whether we like it or not. Even if those challenges were minimized, the language Turkish people including the women population speaks is here to stay. Being a woman is equivalent to being weak and inferior. It is high time that we change this outlook. Having put all these facts on the sheet, I would also like to add the notes that Turkey is one of the few countries which gained its rights to be elected and to vote (in year 1934), accepted the Civil Law protecting women rights in the society ( in year 1926), and had the first female pilot (1932). This makes me think, why still today, we are facing these gender related problems in my country?