Kamil Pasha

The murder of Italian artist Pippa Bacca has raised a discussion in the Turkish media of violence in general in Turkey and violence against women in particular. Bacca was hitchhiking across Europe and the Middle East dressed as a bride in a demonstration for world peace and was picked up in Turkey by a truck driver who raped and murdered her. (click for article) While a crime like this can happen anywhere, it also provides an occasion to take a closer look at the particular circumstances of violent behavior in Turkey and its relation to being male and female. In a previous post, I mentioned the glorification of fighting and dying in educational textbooks. Violence is presented as bringing honor to men. Guarding honor is a theme in violence against women (from surveillance and beatings by male relatives all the way to so-called “honor” killings of women who disobey family expectations — or even just appear to), but also in violence by men against other men.

The trigger for violence in Turkey is very low. The other day I was walking down the narrow sidewalk of the main street in my neighborhood when I was shoved aside by a middle-aged tough who then cursed at me over his shoulder for not moving fast enough. I swallowed my retort because I knew that my saying anything could easily expand the incident. I didn’t feel threatened — but only because I was in MY neighborhood with shopkeepers I knew all around me. If the situation blew up, these men would step in against that man. I had the right to be protected (by men against men) because I was a bona fide member of their community. And if I had been a stranger? I like to think the friendly shopkeepers would have stepped in, but I’m not sure how much they would have risked for a stranger. Last year, a Turkish friend of mine took a Scandinavian women’s rights delegation to dinner in Beyoglu, a popular night life area with many restaurants. It is a pedestrian zone, but there is a parking mafia that parks cars for patrons. When the women emerged from the restaurant around midnight, one of the cars ran over the foot of a delegation member, at which point my Turkish friend yelled at the driver. He and two of his mafia colleagues came over and beat her up. When the police came, their first question to her was, “What are you doing in a place like this at this time of night?” In other words, she was the accused: a woman out of place, not acting according to community norms, so responsible for whatever happened to her. To make matters worse, the mafia men are now suing my friend. (see my previous blogs about the judicial system to see how something like this is possible.)

The violence also is often men against men. Recently, a number of blood fueds have been in the news. Dozens of men, young and old, in opposing families have been killed, even though some younger members have stood up and said they wanted this to stop. But community pressure forces the killings to go on (including pressure by women, who are also affected by perceptions of compromised “family honor”, for instance making it hard for their children to marry.)

The problem? Education that presents violence and fighting as a male duty; the association of masculinity with hair-trigger temper and violence; the notion of “honor”, which in popular usage is so broadly defined that it encompasses everything from someone being in the wrong place in line to get water at the well (leading to a blood feud) to defending the honor of the nation (the term can be used to refer to a legitimate military maneuver or to the extra-legal assassination of civilians like the ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.) In the popular imagination, the fact that the US military hooded Turkish officers whom they mistakenly arrested in Iraq a few years ago is seen as an unforgettable offense to Turkish national honor (the hooding), often eclipsing the need to consider any other issues in deciding a (fighting) stance vis-a-vis the US. The term honor is used by the military, the government, the media, the grocery store owner, family elders, and the tough in the street. The focus on honor makes everything a personal matter — a fighting matter — from walking down the street to debating Turkey’s geopolitics.

Tags: Culture, Education, Rights, Women //