Open the world map.
Start in Turkey, visit the Alawite villages of Syria, climb the Yazidi mountains, descend into the dark streets of Sudan, walk through the rubble of Palestine and look into the shadows of Iran's execution tables.
You will realize something:
Violence against women has no nationality, no flag. It knows no religion, sect or border. Wherever there is a male-dominated order, violence operates like a “national heritage”.
Silencing Women, Legitimizing Violence
In Turkey, women are silenced under the pretext of “family structure”.
Syria is abandoned to its fate as a “state of war”.
The mentality that treats Yazidi women as “booty” feeds from the same darkness as the women in Sudan who are trapped between hunger, war and rape.
Developed Western countries are no different. Women still do not have equal opportunities with men in politics, business and pay equality. Wage gaps, glass ceilings, leaving the burden of care to women alone and sexual harassment are still widespread.
Around the world, in the shadow of war and crisis, women continue to suffer the most. Women's inequality is a universal problem, regardless of geography, culture or economic development.
Moreover, even in the most advanced Western civilizations, women are victims of inequality.
Even in the US, the UK, Germany and France, women are still underrepresented in political decision-making, pay inequality persists and harassment in the workplace is widespread. While there has been progress in legal and social rights, women still face systemic disadvantages.
Being a woman in Palestine...
Bombardment, occupation, detentions, allegations of sexual violence, strip searches.
While the world's most “sensitive” countries are still making diplomatic statements, women are pulling their children out of the rubble.
War is in the interest of men.
The price is paid in women's bodies.
Iran: A Strand of Hair is Stronger than a Bullet
A woman can be killed just for showing her hair.
Millions of women took to the streets after Mahsa Amini.
She cut their hair, burned their headscarves and exposed the regime's fears.
What was the answer?
Torture, detention, execution.
The state has admitted that it is even afraid of a woman's hair.
Because sometimes a hair is stronger than a bullet.
Sudan, Yazidi women, Syrian Alawite women...
The geography changes, the method is the same.
Systematic violence against women in the midst of war in Sudan, Yazidi women's cry for justice after years of captivity, Syrian Alawite women's struggle for life in the shadow of sectarian conflicts...
They all prove the same truth: Male violence is universal; so is women's resistance.
Situation in Turkey: “We Condemn” Policy
The state has a fixed line for the women who are murdered every day in Turkey:
“We condemn.”
They condemn it so much that it has almost become public policy.
But the truth is obvious:
At least more than 8,000 women have been murdered in the last 20 years.
Unofficial figures put the number at 10,000.
“There is no femicide, there is a domestic dispute.”
“She got a protection order but fate...”
“He did it in anger.”
Each of these sentences is an accomplice.
The Istanbul Convention was the clearest and strongest text to protect women from violence.
What was it that the state didn't like?
It placed the responsibility for preventing violence on the state, ended impunity, made women's statements the basis, and excluded the excuses of “honor”, “custom” and “tradition” from the court gates.
That's why they left in the middle of the night.
No parliament, no parliament, no people.
Women's lives were sacrificed to the signature of one person.
The contract is gone, leaving only women's graves.
Conscience on Paper: Women's Shelters
The number of women's shelters in Turkey is far below what it should be.
According to the law, every municipality with a population over 50,000 is obliged to open a shelter.
But what is the truth?
Only 32 out of more than 200 municipalities have opened shelters.
Yani kanuna uyan belediye oranı %15 bile değil.
The state says: “You have nowhere to run.”
But when you open the doors, it's empty.
Even when a woman who is subjected to violence seeks refuge in the state, she falls into the state's vacuum.
Women Will Destroy This Order
A woman pulls her child out of the rubble in Palestine,
A woman in Iran wears her hair down despite the threat of execution,
The cry of Yazidi women for justice after captivity,
The woman in Sudan who endures life despite the darkness,
Women in Turkey who do not give up the squares...
They all tell the same truth: We are alive.
Your order will die.
November 25 is not a day.
It is a day of reckoning.
Women's righteous anger, which knows no borders, is more universal than any state in the world.
Concrete Solution Suggestions
1. Return to the Istanbul Convention and implement it fully.
2. Law No. 6284 should be expanded, not left without holes.
3. The number of women's shelters should be tripled.
4. Practices that favor men such as “good behavior”, “provocation” and “tie discount” should be abolished.
5. Independent women's support centers working 24/7 should be established in every province.
6. Violence against women should be recognized as a public security issue, not a domestic one.
7. Detention, police station and judicial processes should be made more women-friendly.
8. Compulsory gender equality education should be provided in schools.
9. Municipalities' obligation to provide shelters should be audited and sanctions should be imposed.
10. The participation of independent women's organizations in decision-making processes should be legally guaranteed.
Violence against women is a crime against humanity that knows no geography, sect, identity or borders.
The shame of leaving the Istanbul Convention, the mentality that tries to save money on shelters, the understanding that sacrifices women's right to life to the “survival of the family”...
They are all products of the same darkness.
We reject this darkness.
We want a tomorrow where women are not killed, oppressed and silenced.
One less woman, one less humanity.
And we will not allow it.