ern nation. Yet in recent years, women’s rights have come under attack from the conservative leadership.
Politicians, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have repeatedly made statements denigrating women’s rights — claiming that women are not equal to men and that those who do not have children are “incomplete” and “deficient”.
Activists say this has bred an environment where women’s lives are seen as less valuable — and where men can get away with murder.
“Women are hunted like birds here, and [the politicians] are just watching,” said Gulsum Kav, founder of We Will Stop Femicides, a Turkish women’s rights organisation. “I don’t believe the international community realises the seriousness of femicide in Turkey.”
This is happening at the same time as Erdogan is pushing his Islamist agenda – most notably with the recent decision to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque. It's almost as if the two are related in some way.
That international social media campaign, encouraging women across the world to post black-and-white pictures of themselves in memory of female victims of violence, lost its focus for a while:
As the hashtags were translated and shared in other languages and western celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Eva Longoria and even Ivanka Trump picked up on the trend, the original context appears to have been lost on most users, morphing into a lighthearted – if directionless – display of female solidarity.
Some, like Nigella Lawson, have realised their mistake: “I have only just found out that this challenge was originally meant to draw attention to the growing number of murders of women in Turkey, and am mortified didn’t know when I posted. It seems inappropriate now, and hardly fitting for the serious and terrible issue of femicide. I apologise”.
Nothing yet from Ivanka Trump, but we live in hope.
Leave a Reply