Anger and outrage have erupted in Turkey after the killing of two women by the same man on 4 October in Istanbul.
Semih Celik, 19, killed Ikbal Uzuner and Aysenur Halil, both his age, before committing suicide himself. Celik had past criminal records and was admitted to hospitals several times due to mental health problems.
Elsewhere in Istanbul a week earlier, two men sexually harassed a woman on the street in the Beyoglu district. Both men were arrested on 4 October after being released following a brief police detention. Both men have multiple criminal records.
The cases have resurfaced a familiar pattern for women in Turkey: violence against them that is broad and deep, with no end in sight.
Women have, time after time, said they feel unsafe and failed by the state and the judiciary, which do not rigorously implement existing laws and have created impunity for violent men.
295 women killed in Turkey so far in 2024
Women feel their complaints with the police are not taken seriously and they believe the culture of violence is not addressed properly. What these femicides have made clear for many women in the country is that such crimes are flourishing because they go unpunished. Such impunity has created a climate in which women feel unsafe and men are emboldened in their violent behavior.
Some 295 women have been killed in Turkey so far in 2024, a daily reality of horror for them, an epidemic, a national emergency that is not being handled by the authorities properly. Instead, the government and politicians say they will take action, but none of it has stopped the femicides. They have, instead, chosen to emphasize the sanctity of the family and confine women to traditional roles, of whose bounds they define.
Women have had to repeatedly call for government action and policies that will protect them.
With the most recent horrors, women are once again demanding the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty to combat violence against women from which Turkey withdrew in 2021, is reinstated to really tackle the issue.
'We will set the city on fire'
In the absence of state protection, women find solidarity and support amongst each other. On the streets, in public spaces, at bars, women are always looking out for each other. Failed many times by the police and the judicial system, they know that the first people who will come to their rescue are fellow women and their allies.
The sense of solidarity has grown largely due to the years of work by women’s rights and feminist groups, which have successfully turned grief and the feeling of helplessness into collective rage and organized action.
Women have repeatedly spoken up and will continue to take to the streets, unfazed by potential police crackdowns, until concrete action is taken, as they did over the weekend in Istanbul.
As a placard that appears at many feminist marches in Turkey says, if a woman feels scared to walk in the dark, she should rest assured her sisters will set the city on fire.
