State of emergency stifles women’s rights

Şeyma Paşayiğit
 
According to the report into its 2016 activities of the Women’s Solidarity Centre operating within the Women’s Solidarity Foundation, 465 women applied to the Women’s Solidarity Centre alone over the year, 336 of them due to violence they had suffered. Twenty-two percent of the women had suffered violence along with their children and mothers. Thanks to developments in the aftermath of the 15 July coup attempt, women have been ignored and state of emergency period implementations are cited in justification.
Public bodies uninterested
The vast majority of the women had applied to bodies like the public prosecution, courts, bar associations, legal aid offices and Ankara Bar Association Gelincik Center before applying to the foundation, but met with a lack of interest. In one of the examples from the report, a woman who says she underwent a religious marriage abandoned her complaint on being told at the public prosecution, ‘You are not officially married and the child’s surname is the same as your husband’s so if you don’t withdraw your complaint we’ll give your child to the father.’ In another, at the hearing into a woman who had repeatedly complained about her husband without result, her witness son, on being told by the judge, ‘Look, think carefully, after all it’s your father and if something happens you’ll be sorry later,’ withdrew his testimony and the case came to naught for lack of evidence.
Threats and intimidation
Of the women applying to the foundation, 117 had applied to bodies such as the police station, sub-province police headquarters, hospital police, gendarmerie stations and the 155 police help line while or after the violence was taking place to halt the violence and complain about the person responsible for the violence, but the applications were to no avail. Women who applied to law enforcement agencies were not taken seriously, were given insufficient information and their statements went unrecorded, or they faced accusatory comments. In another example in the report, a woman with children aged four and nine who applied to the gendarmerie station was informed, incorrectly, ‘We will put you in the shelter, but you will have to give up your children to the orphanage,’ and the woman abandoned her application. In another example, a woman who went to the police station to complain immediately after suffering sexual violence was left waiting for twelve hours without her written statement being taken and during that time many police officers got her to describe the incident orally from the start. One of the police officers who spoke to the woman asked her if she was a virgin and his comment that, ‘If you aren’t a virgin, it doesn’t count as rape’ leaves little doubt as to how things currently stand.

Women violence victims have been ignored, the excuse being the state of emergency workload

The state of emergency proclaimed in the aftermath of the 15 July coup attempt has come at a heavy cost to women. Women who have applied to Violence Prevention and Monitoring Centres set up by the Ministry for Family and Social Policies both so as ‘protect the family’ and ‘prevent violence against women’ have found the shelters to be unbearable due to the poor conditions. Women violence victims have been ignored by state bodies and state of emergency implementations have been cited in justification, with it said ‘There was a coup and the police have their work cut out.’ With a police officer, who was interviewing a woman who had gone to the police station to complain immediately after suffering sexual assault, saying, ‘If you aren’t a virgin, it doesn’t count as rape,’ it is abundantly clear how things currently stand.