Daniel Raygoza, contributor

There is no doubt that murder can be jarring for any individual to experience, and much more does it take a toll on society as a whole — but there is a specific harm that comes to women of all kinds when they are targeted for the sake of being women. Femicide is one of the most violent manifestations of hatred against women, defined as the homicide of a woman that was intentionally done due to her gender and is perpetrated by a male. Statistically, this is done by the men who are meant to be their loved ones, as U.N. Women reports that more than 133 women a day are murdered by a (former) intimate partner or male relative. But more than 55% of these killings are done by their current or former intimate partners, revealing a gruesome truth about the hatred that many men carry for the women they supposedly claim that they would protect, care for and love.

On Oct. 4, 19-year-old Semih Çelik brutally murdered Ayşenur Halil and İkbal Uzuner. He decapitated one of the women before committing suicide, throwing both himself and the head of İkbal Uzuner off of the Theodosian Walls in Fatih (in front of her mother no less), where he had plummeted to his death. Such little precaution had been taken for their deaths, as multiple times throughout the year he had been placed into psychiatric facilities. It was also known that Çelik had been unsettling in his behavior towards Uzuner. And before this occurred, three days before the crime, a man shot and killed his wife over an argument; another in Aydin where a wife was killed over a divorce settlement by her own husband. 

Protests erupted over the course of the last month as women took to the streets to bring attention to the femicides that have been occurring all over the country. They have begun to ask, what will the government do for us, when they have only ever cared about their women when a fire has been lit underneath them by social media’s outrage? Women took to the streets, holding signs and mourning the loss of the women in their community at the hands of men. Duvar English reported that protesters (the majority of them being women) chanted slogans such as “Today I could be the next while we scream for İkbal, Ayşegül, and Rojin,” and “We are not a family, we are women. Women are in rebellion,” along with “No obedience, only resistance” and “We will not be the ideal woman. We will not be silent, we are not afraid, we will not obey.” 

Fingers have been pointed towards Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose first conclusion for the femicides that have occured had been the use of drugs. After outlash at his response, his party gave the following statement: “A series of recent events, from the martyrdom of a policewoman to the brutal murder of our young women, have provoked a justified reaction within our nation… It bothers us, as it does everyone else, to see criminal types with dozens of cases on their criminal records, walking around freely.” 

Despite these claims to care about their women, it is well-known that Turkey had withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention, which was an internationally designed document meant to recognise the harm that women are often subject to and specifically designed to combat violence against women. His reasoning? Some of the clauses found in the Convention were against the values of a “traditional” family life.

While protests happen, there can only be prayers said for the names of the women who have lost their lives to men over the last year and centuries. May they rest easily and may their names shed light on just how damaging a patriarchal society can become. 

SOURCES: 

https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/feature-story/2022/11/five-essential-facts-to-know-about-femicide

https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/10/a-horrifying-double-femicide-in-turkey-the-hundreds-before-and-why-you-should-care

https://www.duvarenglish.com/women-in-turkey-take-to-streets-over-brutal-femicides-news-65043