Women Are Starting Their Own Businesses

In the south and southeast of Turkey, still around 40 percent of women are forced into arranged marriages, in Ankara the figure is 22 percent. But despite violent opposition, much has changed in the past two years. Lisa Renard reports

Marital stress in a pre-fab kitchen. The man is mad as hell, the woman tries to explain herself. Angry eyes, loud voices. Another woman panics, tries to smooth things out. The man grabs a knife from the table. There's a skirmish, then he stabs her. Once, twice, three times, then a fourth. Close-up of a knife entering flesh, blood spreads out all over the woman's dress.

Cut to commercials, new cell phones. The morning program in Turkish television. The other stations are showing music videos, soft focus images, hits droning about romantic love.

Female consent to subordination

In a study financed by the Turkish government and the EU at the University of Ankara, over 8,000 women were interviewed about domestic violence. Thirty-nine percent of the women believe that their husbands may have legitimate reasons for becoming violent. The reasons they named included: refusal to have sex, neglecting the children, thriftless behavior, contradicting their husbands, burning the dinner.

Turkish psychotherapist and sexual therapist Halis Cicek, who has a practice in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg and is married to a German woman, is at home in East Anatolia for a visit. His four sister live here. They all married cousins, in forced marriages, except for one of them. As a boy, Cicek was just able to save this sister from hanging herself. She loved someone else and would rather have died than accept the man whom her family chose for her.

In the south and southeast of Turkey, around 40 percent of women are forced into arranged marriages, in Ankara the figure is 22 percent. These figures were the result of a survey by the Turkish human rights organization Women for Women's Rights (WWHR) founded in 1993.

Diyabakir boasts a women's center called Kamer, founded in 1997, initially as a telephone hotline. By the end of 2002, almost 2000 women had called in for help. 70 of them because they feared their families would murder them. When one of them was eventually murdered, the women at Kamer became more forthright in their work. They sought more publicity and sympathizers through press campaigns. Still the women are facing violent opposition.

The brother as a hit-man

Sixteen year old Kadriye Demirel had been raped by a cousin and was five months pregnant. She reported the rape to the police, but it didn't help. The family decided she should die when she could not be married to the cousin, the other possible solution seen by families in such situations.

His family refused, and then Kadriyes' 18-year old brother was chosen as the hit-man. He attacked her with a sword on the street and then ultimately killed her with a stone. He was sentenced to six years in prison under mitigating circumstances.

Thirty-five year old Sems Allak had raised her own siblings because her parents had died, and then was considered too old, by Turkish standards, to marry. She fell in love with a married man, the father of ten children, and was to become his second wife – the typical fate of women who are still single at a later age.

Then the two of them asked an imam to marry them quicker than arranged because she was pregnant. But the family found the order of things wrong here. They stoned the couple to death while the man's ten year old son was made to look on.

"The newspapers report an honor killing every third day; that makes about 150 per year. And this is just the tip of the iceberg," says Pinar Ilkkaracan from WWHR in Istanbul. "But we are very fortunate that this is now being made public. Women in Turkey have experienced a revolution in the past two years."

This is apparently due in part to the EU. In 2000 the European Council condemned "all crimes in the name of honor." And the European Union's demand that the equality of Turkish women be a precondition for Turkey's entry into the EU is now having an effect, even in the conservative eastern and southeastern parts of the country.

In 2001 the Turkish civil law code was amended to make men and women equal. And the criminal law reform this year took up over 30 suggestions for changes demanded by women's rights groups.

Life Sentence for honor killing

For example, honor killings, which were previously seen as provocation and thus perpetrators were granted mitigating circumstances, is now punished with a life sentence. Rape within a marriage is now punishable, and virginity tests earlier under the jurisdiction of school directors can now only be ordered by a judge.

Before the 1980s, when the Hizbollah began to have an influence in the Kurdish region, life in Diyabakir was very different. "Women could move about freely and wear short sleeves," recalls Nebahat Akkoc, director of Kamer. "But in the past two years life has become tangibly freer for women again." Around 100 women have recently started their own businesses in Diyabakir alone.

The majority of Turkish women's rights activists would certainly welcome the country's entry into the EU, says Pinar Ilkkaracan. But it is important to emphasize that "we have NEVER used the EU as an argument for our campaign. To the contrary." They have always said that it is Turkish women who demand their right to self-determination and to human rights, stresses Ilkkaracan. "Women's sexuality and their bodies belong not to their husbands or families, but only to themselves. They are human rights."

Lisa Renard

Translation from German: Christina M. White

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