HALF CHILDREN
I remember the day that we went to my dad’s village in order to tell my mother’s pregnancy to our family elders. When we arrived to the house, my parents went to my grandmother and told that a baby is going to come to visit us. I was waiting a happy scream and a hug from my grandmother, but she just smiled and asked the baby’s gender. We were able to see the disappointment in her eyes when my mom told that it is a “girl”. She looked to the carpet for a few minutes, than put her hands on my mom’s shoulder: “Don’t feel that sad, I hope your third child will be a ‘whole’ child.” My parents were literally shocked, but it was clear that the anger was more dominant than the shock. My dad said that he wouldn’t change his daughters to hundred sons, but my grandmother insisted on that the girls are half children, and not even hundreds of them would be equal with a son.
That’s what makes the life harder for the girls and women in my country: being half. Most of the girls are killed in the villages just because they refuse to marry with the men that they don’t love. Other ones are forced to work in the farms instead of going to school. Their husbands beat the women almost every day; and the women don’t have a chance to protect themselves. The society wants them to be their husbands’, brothers’ and dads’ puppets. According to the ethics, the only things that a woman should do are to cook for their husbands, clean the house, and give birth to the children. They considered as “half” when they obey all of the morals, and they are not even half if they refuse to be “puppets”. Every woman who lets the repressed voice in her to speak up and object to the patriarchy in the ethics, declared as immoral and infidel bitches by the society.
As the “underestimated” girls grow up and become mothers, they teach to be “underestimated” to their daughters, and to “underestimate the women" to their sons, like my grandmother who thinks that a girl is “half” as a woman. This cycle won’t be destroyed until the women, who are suffering from it and actually who help the cycle to continue, rebel. The only way the equation would come is to teach to women to be “free”, and the man to “value” the women, and the women are the only ones who can do that. The women have to show their power to the world, and let the others see what women can achieve if they really want something.
After the foundation of the Republic, and Atatürk’s efforts to make the women more effective in the social life, Turkey is now embracing the “social equality” day by day. Since then, Tansu Çiller has become the first woman president of Turkey, Sabiha Gökçen has become the first woman pilot and Safiye Ali has become the first woman doctor as well as many others. Such examples show that the Turkish women have become a force to be reckoned with in the country.
Even though the Turkish women have achieved lots of things, it doesn’t mean that the “social equality” has achieved in Turkey. It will achieve when every single person in the country will believe that a girl is equal to a boy. It will achieve when also a husband will cook for his wife. It will achieve when a grandmother will still be happy when she learns that she is going to have a granddaughter. That time is the time when the peace, equality and happiness would come to the Republic of Turkey.