Content warning: This article mentions suicide and murder.
On Oct. 4, I woke up to the news of yet another gut-wrenching story from back home in Turkey: A 19-year-old, Semih Çelik, savagely killed Ayşenur Halil and İkbal Uzuner, by decapitating one of them before committing suicide by jumping off of the Theodosian Walls in Fatih. He had been admitted numerous times to psychiatric facilities in the last year and was known to be disturbing towards Uzuner, but as usual, little precaution had been taken. My social media was swarmed with photos of the event from passers-by and long paragraphs of outrage from my friends and family.
Only three days before, a man in Antalya shot his wife over an argument and a man in Aydin killed his wife, a mother of two, during a divorce settlement. The horrible news I got on Oct. 4 was followed by the deaths of 30 more women who were murdered in cold blood by their husbands, brothers and even their own fathers in unspeakable ways. As I write this article, multiple femicides continue to be committed daily.
Often, when we hear about tragedies such as these, people relate to them by saying things such as “What if she was your mother?” or “How would you feel if it was your wife?” But the fact that we contextualize women by their relationship is the issue, as these femicides show; it is often these very relationships that can be deadly for women. In 2023, 65% of femicides in Turkey were committed in the victims’ homes and in 2024, 41% of perpetrators were the victims’ husbands. This understanding should encourage everyone, including myself, to stop valuing women by their male counterparts and instead value them as their own person, one with so much life left in them.
It goes without saying that femicides in Turkey, as well as around the world, are not at all random and are triggered by very real cultural and political factors. The political state of the country plays such a large role in these killings that the phrase “Femicides are political” has become a widely used slogan in Turkey. The last decade or so has seen a significant increase in general distaste for the ruling party, an economic crisis and most importantly Turkey’s withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention — an agreement aimed at preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. This withdrawal was met with universal disagreement as President Joe Biden called the decision “deeply disappointing,” saying it was a “disheartening step backward for the international movement to end violence against women globally.” The lack of international legislation on violence against women makes women even more vulnerable, and cases where the murderer is given a sentence commutation based on “unjust provocation” or even walks away unscathed have become more and more common, reflecting the devastating reality of Turkey’s failed judicial system. Following President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s remark that Turkey’s withdrawal from the convention “has had no effect” on the battle against violence against women, the opposition party leader Özgür Özel spoke out against him, saying that bad news is coming from all around Turkey and that the ruling party is complaining about “a culture of impunity” when they themselves caused it.
In response to the lack of larger government efforts to combat violence against women, non-governmental organizations and women’s groups such as Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız, "We Will Stop Femicides" in English, have been essential in creating social awareness and a support network for victims of violence against women. After the murder of Münevver Karabulut in 2010, primarily her relatives formed the group. They began organizing protests, reporting statistical analysis of femicides and suspicious deaths, which governmental ministries still refuse to publish, following up on lawsuits related to violence against women and offering support for victims. They are also associated with the website Anıt Sayaç, "Monument Counter" in English. This database lists every known femicide and suspicious death in Turkey since 2008 and provides information on each woman, or girl, in some cases, her murderer and the current status of the case. Seeing hundreds and hundreds of names that are so familiar that they could belong to any of my friends was a devastating experience. I highly recommend visiting the site to fully comprehend the scope of this problem and read the stories of the affected women.
Reading the news of Halil and Uzuner that day, both of whom are my age, 19, I couldn’t even imagine the kind of pain they must have suffered. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be savagely murdered and for my family to find me deceased, photographs of the event all over social media. I hope neither I nor any other woman in Turkey has to again.
I would have liked this article to be about the marvels of my country — how beautiful and special it is, but instead, I feel a crushing sense of disappointment and shame. I write this piece from a position of immense privilege because I can choose to care, unlike the many women in Turkey who can’t escape the daily reality of these murders. I hope that you will go out of your way to learn more about the femicides plaguing Turkish women, get involved in the many organizations seeking to extend their reach internationally and see that this isn’t a foreign issue: It’s happening all over the world wherever you look. The We Will Stop Femicides platform, although focused on Turkey, recognizes it as a universal issue with resources on violence against women during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile and politics related to femicides at the U.S.-Mexico border.
There’s so much in the world to care about and advocate for. You have to start somewhere.
