DEM VOLKE DIENEN

A Woman in Antalya defended herself against a violent husband, who has been violent for a long time, but after a gruesome night of threats, beatings and rape, he hit her on the head with a rifle, then left and threatened that he would kill her and their two children, and so when he came back, she, while being handcuffed on the ground, was able to get control of the rifle and shot him. She was forced to marry him in the first place, because he raped her while she was still in high school and had to give up on her ambitions to become a math teacher.
When she called the police they detained her, and now she is charged with murder and is facing a trial, that could end with a life sentence. The reasoning from the reaction is that she should have contacted the police before or solved the so-called domestic violence in some other way. But when the police is known for doing nothing to help to help women, pushing women back to their abusive men, and when men are regularly acquitted in court for violence and murder within the family, then it should be no wonder why women have to do what it takes to save themselves and their children.
According to the minister of the interior, 266 women were killed by their husbands last year in Turkey, but this is based on lacking reports, and actual number is much higher, in 2009 the number of murdered women were reported to be 953, which was the last year before official statistics on how many women are murdered was put to a halt by Erdogan’s government.
Just one week after the international day of women’s struggle, this case, together with the daily murders of women in Turkey, shows how the old Turkish state is complacent in these crimes.