Voicing pledges on preventing femicides not enough, they must be implemented
After each femicide that shocks the public, we hear the same words, the same messages of resoluteness and same outcries.
But they don’t help. Not an inch of progress is ever made. Instead of fully implementing the Istanbul Convention, any chance of withdrawing from it is sought. Mechanisms to protect women are not being properly rendered functional.
Just as the reactions to the ferocious murder of Pınar Gültekin was rising, a cry for help rose from another point in Bodrum, the resort city where she was slaughtered.
“I will write these after what has taken place and after what I have been experiencing. I don’t want to be harmed. I don’t want to die. The 46-year-old N.Ş., who I believe is a pervert, someone I am sure to be schizophrenic, is obsessed with me,” wrote the 21-year-old T.Ç. on her social media. What happened to her shows how the system does not work, but also how it can work.
T.Ç. says how N.Ş., who has a shop near where she lives, started to show an obsessive interest to her and sent disturbing messages 1.5 years ago. We all know how an obsessive pervert can take things far.
The threats of the obsessive pervert starts quickly targeting T.Ç.’s family and her circle, as can be guessed. We also know spreading fear and making people feel helpless drive their courage.
You could simply say, “Call the police, send him to court.”
Believe me you are not the only one to think like that.
T.Ç. goes several times to the police. In fact, she even goes to court for having responded to the pervert’s threats.
The Judge’s advice is “I am being threatened every day but see I keep on living,” according to T.Ç.
Police say there is nothing they can do in the absence of a physical assault.
Apart from a few official “counsels,” N.Ş. does not even face a punishment threat.
You are also not the first one to think, “Well then reach out to this guy’s family so they warn him.”
Turning his back to his nephew, the uncle of the pervert offers mindboggling advice: “Take him to the mountains and kill him there.”
His brothers come to Bodrum to talk to him but return after having a two-week holiday in Bodrum.
In the meantime, the threats continue. Obviously, the guy gets encouraged thinking, “I can do whatever I please, no one is doing anything.”
He draws his courage from this climate, from this lack of interest, from the fact that current practices to fight this systematic violence which could change the course of things if fully implemented are rendered nonfunctional.
Following the spread of T.Ç.’s outcry on social media, there were some who showed interest.
The Family, Labor and Social Services Ministry issued a statement, saying, “The person disturbing T.Ç. is currently under detention. Our law enforcement units are sensitively following the issue. Our provincial department’s personnel got directly in touch with Tuğçe and will provide the necessary assistance…”
We have seen numerous times how these models and the likes of them disturbing T.Ç. and other women can turn into monsters and what they are capable of.
In the name of the legacy of hundreds and thousands of women, and in order to protect and save women from these threats and to stop these murders, it is time to keep and implement the promises made, rather than just voicing them.
