Violence Is Not Normal by Defne Uysal

One day, while my family and I were watching the news, the newscaster started narrating that a  woman had been killed with a rifle by her husband because she wanted to divorce him. The story was  already frustrating and disgusting, however, the way the newsreader acted bothered me too. There  was no sign of sorrow neither on the face nor in the words. The newscaster was acting as if it is such  an ordinary thing to occur. It was then I realised that violence towards women has been normalised in my country Turkey. 

According to a report prepared by We Will End Femicide Platform in 2021, 280 women were killed by  men and 217 were found suspiciously dead in Turkey. Yet, the people are not being informed well  about the significance of the situation and all the news and tweets fall on stony ground. The first few  days it becomes a trending topic on Twitter, unfortunately, after some time passes people living in  Turkey typically move on with their lives. The obvious reason for this situation is the ancient violent  mentality. As I see it this mentality cannot be changed only by women’s non-governmental  organizations. Both the traditional Turkish media and the Turkish government should be supporting the victims, unlike today, where there is a vicious circle continuing to normalise violence against  women in Turkey. 

The portrayal of women who have lost their lives because of a man is poorly done in the Turkish media.  During the news, most of the broadcasters tell how the crime went, put a black and white photo of  the victim and a blurred one of the criminal. From time to time, they also say they feel sorry for the  victim and her loved ones while having no sign of distress on their faces. This way more and more  people stop caring about the victims and these become a part of the daily life of Turkish people. 

Apart from the news, Turkish TV serials also take part in normalizing violence towards women.  According to research on violence against women on TV serials made in 2009, 5.8% of the scenes they  have examined contained a type of violence against women. 12.5% of them were physical violence,  whereas 3.1% were sexual violence. Supposing most of the viewers identify themselves with the main  characters, being exposed to these on TV multiple times turns the concept of violence into something  totally fine in many people’s heads. Though the “educated” and the “privileged” have talked about  their discomfort out loud repeatedly via social media, producers continue playing the game the way  they know it. The reason for it is that despite the complaints there is still a huge demand for those  types of series both inside and outside of Turkey. In addition, RTÜK - the council in Turkey which checks  whether the content on TV and radio shows are “appropriate” or not – is playing ostrich. Hence there  is not much of an obstacle for the producers to get in the way. 

Just as the media, lately, the government does not give the attention needed. Back in 2011, Turkey  was one of the first countries to sign the Istanbul Convention, a human rights treaty against violence  against women and domestic violence. Yet again, in 2021, the same government withdrew from the  Istanbul Convention. Consequently, the number of femicides continued increasing as there is no convention left to protect women from men with homicidal tendencies. Additionally, on numerous  occasions, men get good conduct time for their violent actions towards women, whilst women do not  get such discounts if they accidentally kill the person to survive. As mentioned earlier, the media does  not cover these injustices properly, therefore enough amount of pressure is not being put on the  government to enact new and effective laws. 

A clear majority knows and would support the idea that violence against women should come to an  end as immediate as possible, nonetheless, just a small group of people is aware of the case. This makes it difficult for women to fight for their basic human rights. For this reason, I believe that the normalization of violence against women is the biggest challenge in front of Turkish women. Not only  do women lose allies, but they also start giving in to violent behaviour against themselves, providing the vicious circle of normalization continues.