Women; our women

Here's an article from today's Turkish Daily News, highlighting some of the incredibly unpleasant events that led up to World Women's Day on the 8th. Crazily enough, although this has been in the news for some time now, many of the teachers at our school did not even know that it had happened.

Dogu ERGİL

Although a few days late, I wholeheartedly congratulate the women of our country and the world, for their show of solidarity on “World Women's Day,” commemorated on March 8. Women's equality and freedom have been the litmus test of democracy, social justice and discrimination of all sorts in our day. If this statement seems too hypothetical or abstract, one should observe the mass beating (not meeting) of women on the streets of Istanbul, who were trying to commemorate their international day, seizing the opportunity, in part, by chanting slogans of various ideological leanings. Their enthusiasm was matched by the police force, who tried their kickboxing skills and effective club use on women's sensitive organs, skills that must have been acquired during their new “riot control” training consistent with EU standards.

Yet their rather effective measures were bitterly (for some, insultingly) criticized by the EU Troika that met with Turkish authorities in Ankara the following day. Most Turkish officials got furious about these criticisms. Some said that “the police were provoked” (if not by chants, by what?), some tried to protect the police by claiming that most of those demonstrations were illegal because permission was not obtained from the governor's office. But none of the officials could explain the disproportionate use of force against women who only cheered and chanted.

This conflict revealed two basic qualities of Turkish culture that is an indication of its incomparability with more liberal cultures. One is political in nature; the other is social. However, they compliment each other:

1) Primacy of state over society. Rights are apportioned to the citizens as privileges by executive initiative in return for obedience.

2) Primacy of men over women that take the shape of discrimination against the latter especially in conservative sectors of the society. Male dominance of women is intertwined with state dominance of society, both of which reinforces authoritarian traits in political and social life.

The official rhetoric of the government was protective of the police, as usual, despite obvious misdemeanor. Why? Because the police are primarily charged with upholding the established order and its power structure. Defending the rule of law is secondary in state centered political systems. Criticizing excesses in the practices of the security apparatus is taken as criticism of the whole system, with its existing hierarchy. The belief of those in power is such that when one goes down, so do the other echelons of the official structure and hierarchy. This is why legal scrutiny of the bureaucracy and official cadres of the state has always been problematic in Turkey. This is the root cause of most power abuses and corruption. This is why Turkey is so much in debt due to corruption while she has failed to achieve zero tolerance against torture. No wonder the country appears under the “semi-free” category of the reliable international scale of the Freedom House research institution that measure and compares basic freedoms and liberties in each country.

Regarding being a victim of traditionalism that affect women as lack of education, gainful employment and being subjected to systematic in-house violence, public beating of women did not seem as an extraordinary phenomenon to our authorities. They dwelled on two concepts: provocation and illegal demonstration. Let us assume, for a moment that the police were provoked, but with what? It was not violence that caused them to react, it was chanting and shouting without official permission and in the name of illegal organizations. World history is full of banned organizations of one time or another emerging and eventually becoming favored political parties. More importantly, there is no legal justification to beat and cripple people for chanting words of protest during peaceful demonstrations, especially after adopting laws as part of EU reforms. Why then?

Considering that nearly 70 percent of Turkish women are subject to violence of some sort at home by their husbands, as revealed by research data, the reactions of the police against “cocky, insolent” women may simply be a “normal” reflex born out of daily practice. Conditioned by authoritarian politics and culture alike, both the bureaucracy and politicians (of the incumbent AKP) condoned, or at best, did not renounce the beating of woman. How else can we interpret the following statements?

- The Istanbul police chief: “Police use force. This is his right. Transgression of the allowable degree of force and behavior ought to be judged by the judiciary.”

- The prime minister: “The police were provoked. The members of TUSIAD (Association of Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen that criticized the act) should be concerned with their businesses and leave politics to the executives.”

Both of these statements are exemplary of the dominance of the state over society and politics over law. The first portrays the police as the punishing hand of the state, like that of the shepherd tending the flock, disciplining it when necessary. The other statement totally misses the meaning of politics as collective decision-making, power sharing and collective scrutiny of executives' deeds. The prime minister still believes that politics is a privilege of politicians and executed by the government. How unfortunate!

If the government believes that it can discipline the people at will disregarding internationally acknowledged legal standards, how in the world can we prevent men in their pajamas from beating women at home or in their uniforms on the streets?

How many years is it going to take to adopt EU values and standards?!