Marriage and family glorification escalates domestic violence

On Friday, Jan. 3, if the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) does not create a new sermon crisis, we will talk about the numbers. The Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) will announce the inflation rate and there will be a lot of talk, no doubt. However, on the same day at 11.00 a.m., a statement on a vital issue will be released. The violence report of 2024 will be presented. We Will Stop Femicide Platform - Women's Assembly makes its press call with the following chilling and intriguing sentence: “To share the highest number of femicides and suspicious deaths of women in a year in 2024 since we started collecting data...” The platform's line of struggle by reporting and publishing data on violence through press surveys is a sine qua non for the struggle against masculine violence. It is stated that there have been known femicides and suspicious deaths of women since they started the reporting work and that this data will be disclosed to the press.

One of the indicators of social decay is the increase in violence against women and femicides. The number of suspicious deaths of women is approaching the number of femicides. Although the first of these two data may seem like the individual actions of masculine perpetrators, it shows that social prejudices lead women to their deaths. It is also an indication that the understanding that makes men the killers of women is on the rise instead of regressing. The second, suspicious deaths of women, is an indication that in a country ruled by a single person, institutions that do not function without the instructions of that single person do not fulfill their duty to protect women's right to life. Institutions that do not function to protect women's right to life also mean that the state's duty to uncover the crime, to prosecute those responsible, and to ensure justice after the murder of women is not fulfilled. In order to combat masculine violence, it is necessary to monitor the extent of the problem and the regularity of its functioning. For this reason, regular and healthy data sharing, data-based analysis, and evaluations should be made and the functioning should be evaluated every six months. However, the government has never realized regular data sharing. In other words, the state has not even taken the first step in the fight against violence.

The specific type of crime defined as gender-based violence or violence against women is the oppression methods of masculine domination to which a person is subjected in various dimensions from birth to death simply because they were born in the female sex. Girls and women who resist the oppression of masculine domination are subjected to verbal, emotional, economic, physical, and sexual violence. And the extreme form of this violence is femicide. And we talk about the jaw-dropping number of femicides in this country as if they were the sole fault of masculine domination. And as if that were not enough, we also have a list of suspicious deaths of women. The ones that are not even worth investigating, or the murders of trans women, or the murders disguised as suicides, which is it? No one gives the answer to this to the society. Because if the citizen is a woman, there is a system unwilling to defend her right to life.

If the state were not reluctant to defend the right to life of women and children, it would effectively implement protective and preventive measures. It would enforce the laws effectively. Yet the relevant departments, such as Minister Ali Yerlikaya, can provide manipulative information even to the Parliamentary Investigation Commission. With the slide frame titled “Electronic Monitoring Center with 1500 monitoring capacity”, he caused the members of the Commission and women's organizations to perceive that the number of electronic handcuffs allocated to violence against women was increased from 1000 to 1500. However, from the moment that center was established, its monitoring capacity was 1500, and 1000 of this number was allocated to protect women. The center has been conducting surveillance in 62 provinces since its opening and this number has not been increased. Despite more than a million applications for protection, only 1000 handcuffs are used in 62 provinces (out of 81), and one of those handcuffs is expected to be released in order to fulfill the protection order issued by the court, while the Minister presents a figure arranged to give the impression that the number of handcuffs is 1500. 

On the other hand, he does not neglect to accuse women who have been granted protection orders of “opening the door”. However, just two weeks before the Minister made this accusation, a man had set fire to an apartment building in a neighborhood so close to the Ministry. Because the woman under a protection order who wanted a divorce did not open the door, the man poured gasoline on the door of the apartment on the 5th floor of a 10-storey building with 62 apartments and set it on fire, causing the neighborhood to rise up. The fact that statements blaming the victim of violence, not the perpetrator, come from the highest officials should be considered as one of the examples of social decay.

In its December report, the platform published that there were -at least- 32 femicides and 26 suspicious deaths of women in November 2024. I add the phrase “at least” because the data obtained through the press scanning is undoubtedly based on the news reports. We learn about the existence of incidents that are not reported in the press from the announcements of local reporters about unpublished news on violence. We know that the government policy, which makes it possible to suppress the press with various tools, not only tries to make masculine violence seem small and its own struggle seem big, but also develops a familist policy with the news of the Family Institute established last week. The vast majority of femicides, 63 percent, are committed at home, which is the family residence. The majority of the murdered women, 65 percent, are married women. While the family is both the main perpetrator and the crime scene of femicides, the government escalates gender-based violence by constantly repeating the discourse of strengthening the family and developing policies. Instead of preventing violence against women simply because they were born in the female sex, the government chooses to reinforce men’s domination in the family, that is, masculine domination, with policies that will strengthen the family, the main perpetrator of this gender-based violence. This is one of the factors that encourage the increase and brutalization of violence against women. Unfortunately, the reflection of family sanctifying approaches in practice and judicial decisions in line with government policies is one of the consequences of this monstrous system and is an incentive for masculine perpetrators.

Yet, with statements such as “the age of marriage among young people is rising, we cannot get girls to like boys and boys to like girls, the number of children in families is decreasing”, Erdoğan shows how far he is from social reality. First, strengthening men’s domination must be stopped. The survival of newborns must be ensured, and the protection of survivors must be realized. And the necessary conditions for the prevention of masculine violence must be fulfilled. But this is not possible with the rhetoric of “our sacred family”, and it is contrary to reality, because it is not the institution of the family that is sacred, but human life and the recognition of women as autonomous individuals. As a result of the family protectionist approach, the Güran family and many 'Narin' were torn away from life. What matters is human life, ensuring the safety of human beings, especially women and girls. The duty of the government and the state should be to work to prevent male domination in the family. Women's rights, children's rights, and the law should be dominant in the family, not men's.