Impunity for violence against women in Turkey: Pepper spray sales peak

Pepper spray sales in Turkey skyrocketed over the weekend after the recent brutal femicides, increasing reportings of sexual harassment, and policies of impunity against perpetrators.

Monday October 07 2024 11:28 pm

Ceren Bayar / Gazete Duvar

Pepper spray sales in Turkey surged over the weekend of Oct. 5-6, particularly after the brutal murder of two 19-year-old women by Semih Çelik and the disclosure of numerous Turkish online forums targeting women and children, where the killer had reportedly been active.

Erkan Keskin, the owner of an authorized dealer of a pepper spray brand produced in Turkey, said that they normally make bulk sales to institutions, but that they received a lot of individual orders last weekend.

He stated that they received almost 30 times more orders than their routine daily orders as of Oct. 6.

Keskin added, “We received over 1,000, even close to 2,000 orders on Saturday and Sunday. We had to write an 'out of stock' warning on our website for a while because we could not keep up with the orders and shipping. One order per minute was dropped into the system.”

The producer stated that they observed that some dealers increased prices when the demand was so high.

Keskin said that pepper spray makes walking on the street a bit safer and that it can only be used to save time.

A representative of another dealer said that their sales also doubled over the weekend.

The company official told Gazete Duvar that while they used to sell 30-40 pepper sprays a day, they received orders for 60-70, adding, “We saw that there were sellers who raised the price when the demand was high. We did not think of it because we wanted more women to have access to it.”

Merve Güler, a representative from the top pepper spray company in the country, said that there was an intense demand from online dealers at the weekend as they are a wholesale company.

Stating that there was a demand above their plans and that they had a shortage of stock, Güler said that they had to accelerate production. Güler noted, “I wish such incidents had not happened and we would not have experienced this intensity of demand.”

(English version by Can Bodrumlu)

Here is the trends for “biber gazı (pepper spray in Turkish)” over the past three months on Google, showing the surge during Oct. 5-6.

Topics Violence against women Pepper spray femicide Femicides in Turkey