Violence and honor

The story of Hayrettin, arrested for having savagely beaten his wife Ayşe who had discovered him in flagrant crime of polygamy, is a true story and not so unpublished in Anatolia. Much more original, however, is the alternative sentence imposed on him by the judge of the court in which he took his wife: giving flowers to his wife at least once a week for five months. Hayrettin since the trial has been strenuously opposed to the decision, stating: “Rather than making a fool of myself with flowers, I prefer to divorce. Nobody has the right to offend my honor."

 The statement is the legacy of the patriarchal dimension of a sexist culture, which amplifies the emotional, physical and psychological ties with the male figure. It is, after all, the “domestic” version of an organicistic, top-down and dirigiste conception of the state and power, traditionally typical of the Turkish-Ottoman world but not only. It is the premise, not inevitable but highly probable, of physical, psychological and social violence against women, where the religious factor, mind you, is, unfortunately, only a corollary and certainly not the founding element! Not many know that on 7 April 2011 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe approved a charter on the prevention and fight against violence against women and domestic violence, called the Istanbul Convention, the city where it was opened for signature. 

Turkey was already the first country to ratify the protocol in 2012; Italy did it the following year. The Convention characterizes violence against women as a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination (Article 3 letter a), invites countries to prevent it and not only to protect the victims and prosecute the perpetrators (Article 5). In Turkey, legislation has since been implemented to protect women from honor killings and husband rape. Listening centers have been set up, an attempt has been made to balance the obligations of partners even within civil marriage.

Unfortunately, over time, however, the violence has not decreased, neither in Turkey (146 femicides in the first half of 2020 alone, 474 victims in 2019, 440 in 2018) or elsewhere. As if this were not enough, the ideological exploitation of this Convention has also increased, often suspected in bad faith, especially in religious contexts (Christians and Muslims in particular), to legitimize homosexual orientations (opening the door to the LGBT political agenda and to liberal thought). feminist) and thus threatening the reference to the traditional family.

Politics has taken over the debate by further polluting the waters of an authentic and intellectually honest confrontation. A high representative of the AKP, the party of President Erdoğan, declared that the signing of the Convention was a mistake, calling for the withdrawal of the Turkish signature (on 26 July it was Poland who announced the same intention), consistent with a series of positions that are part of an ideological campaign to contrast the West and which rides on supposed "non-negotiable values" (expressions well known in circles closest to us) based on Islam, Turkicism and the myth of the Ottoman Empire . Despite the prevailing authoritarianism, even in Turkey this vision is not destined to pass without opposition. The President has even noted this within his own family. Her daughter, 34-year-old Sumeyye Erdoğan, took a public stand in defense of the Istanbul Convention, together with the Islamic women's association Kadem, of which she is vice-president.

But in Turkey even the squares are in turmoil, especially after the discovery of the body of 27-year-old Pinar Gültekin, barbarously killed by her ex-boyfriend in the Aegean region of Muğla, at the end of July: a heinous crime that has rekindled the anger of women Turkish. The latter know very well that the drama of violence takes not only the extreme form of the suppression of life. A raped woman, when she survives, suffers not only pain and a sense of repulsion, but also shame and a kind of general disapproval of society, as if she were the first to be responsible for what happened to her.

It is on the basis of these findings that a serious reflection should be initiated, impossible regardless of a real cultural and educational battle, first of all in families too often abandoned to a destiny of mere socio-economic survival, and in an educational system in the latter. years systematically impoverished, when not dismantled or defrauded of its task of providing tools of mature and conscious judgment and not reduced to ideological brainwashing in support of an authoritarian vision of a power simply at the service of its own perennialization and not of the good of society.


Claudio Monge
NP october 2020