A Dandelion Seed on Fire
As a 16-year-old girl, my homeland is the famous “Constantinople” of the Byzantium Empire, the intercultural junction of Europe and Asia. Take a gaze at Turkey from outside; probably the cultural melancholy of the Bosphorus would catch your eye as you drank our traditional “rabbit-blood” red tea. What you’d miss would be what’s within the closed doors of Anatolia: the melancholy of desperately muted lips and the blood of women. Unfortunately, in Turkey, the hidden stink of inhumanity joins the northeaster and caresses many women’s houses. Everyday in the third page of newspapers, we encounter a new tragedy. The names change, the stories change, but not the cold reality that another woman was murdered again. As a matter of fact, 1134 women were murdered in Turkey in just the last 5 years (KadınCinayetleri.org). What a shame that society is continuously forced to see that violence on women has become a part of the ordinary life, and what a shame to get used to these kind of news day by day.
Özgecan Aslan was nineteen when she was raped, stabbed several times and burned to death by a minibus driver and his friends who were “provoked” by her sexuality. When she tried to resist, they first beat her up with an iron bar and they cut her hands. That’s why I am scared, trying to return to home at 7 pm. As a woman, I feel the urge to protect myself from the deadly possibilities, considering we are dandelion seeds drifting away in the spring breeze during an aerial bombardment. I don’t use public transportation after 8 pm, I don’t wear shorts at public, and I try not to catch too much attention. In other words, I limit my freedom in the sake of preventing abuse.
On the other hand, I’m scared of the inhumane moral degeneration and lack of understanding our society faces today, which is actually the reason behind violence towards women. Many men today have a mindset that women exist to serve them, and otherwise they believe in the right to oppress women physically or psychologically. Women are considered guilty and believed they can be punished if they talk back, are sexually “provocative”, want to divorce, aren’t virgins, don’t want to reunite, or make their partners jealous. Reasons (!) vary, yet it doesn’t change the concept of Turkish women suffering from the severe violence and even murder. We women face the consequences of a segregate and contemptuous mindset: a neurological sickness, indeed.
However, every sickness has a remedy. In order to eliminate violence towards women we must firs redefine the perception of “women” in the minds of men, with a comprehensive education. Education starts at household, mentions a famous Turkish saying, and we women have an important role in educating sons and daughters. We must teach our sons to respect women, and we must teach their own value to our daughters. We must explain our sons how violence is never an option, and ensure our daughters never remain silent to violence and abuse. I’m scared, and many of us are too, but we must show our descendants that fear can also ignite the spark of freedom.
Second step is to enhance the posture of women in Turkish education system, along with the Ministry of Education. The founder of Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk once said: “If henceforward the women don’t share in the social life of the nation, […] we shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with Western civilizations,” (1925). Our educational program should abide by dear Atatürk’s modernist ideology and empower women in its contexts, because if children understand the equality of sexes and the potential of a woman, women will cease to be the suppressed party. Also, the young generation would understand the glory of women if a higher importance to strong women figures is given in lessons, such as “Karafatma” who fought side by side with men in Turkish Independence War.
Last but not least, our juridical system mustn’t show tolerance to rapists or murderers of women, and firm laws should protect our rights. After the murder of Özgecan Aslan, a new campaign was started at Change.org whose aim was to abolish “good-conduct abatement” towards rapists and murderers of women. The proposal has entered the Turkish parliament, waiting for approval.
A dandelion seed has burned in the bombardment, the fear has ignited many others, and an idea for freedom has been blazing. May it turn violence and oppression to ashes.
750 words
Ezgi Okutan / Turkey/ Robert College Highschool
WORKS CITED
Gisèle Durero-Koseoglu, écrivaine D’Istanbul. Overblog, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.
"Kadın Cinayetleri." Kadın Cinayetleri. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.