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Written by Emily Stephens (she/her) for The Rising Womxn Zine
TRIGGER WARNING: domestic violence, rape, murder, abuse
Gender based violence threatens the wellbeing of women and girls' across the world. Eliminating gender-based violence is the only way to ensure the safety of our women and girls'. Preventing it not only improves the health of women and children, it also boosts economic productivity and educational opportunities, giving women a greater start in life.
In recent weeks, a social media trend called #challengeaccepted went viral following protests in Turkey to highlight the rise of femicide and domestic violence. For those that don’t know, femicide is the murder of a girl or woman, usually by a man on account of her gender.
For many, the name Pinar Gültekin won’t mean anything, but it should. Gültekin was a 27-year-old Turkish woman who went missing and was tragically found dead on the 21st July in the city of Muğla. According to reports, after Gültekin rejected her boyfriend, Cemal Metin Avcis’ advances – he strangled her to death, burned her body in a rubbish bin, and tried to hide it in the woods by covering it in concrete. The 32-year-old has since been detained on homicide charges.
As if this killing wasn’t horrific enough, it also marked the 50th known murder of women in Turkey in 2020 alone. Understandably, this sparked outrage within the country, and also on social media, with women’s rights advocates and allies urging the Turkish government to take more action to help prevent countless deaths just like Pinar Gültekin’s.
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Avci, Gültekin’s alleged killer, reportedly blamed his ex-girlfriend for his actions. “She threatened to let my wife know about the relationship. She was asking for money. I killed her in a moment of rage,” Turkish media quoted him as saying in his testimony.
The viral social media trend, #challengeaccepted, saw millions of women across the world sharing black-and-white selfies with the accompanying caption, “challenge accepted,’ along with the hashtags #womenempowerment and #womensupportingwomen as the news broke about Pinar Gültekin. This was in an attempt to raise awareness of gender-based violence, femicide and to try and get justice for Gültekin.
In 2019, it was recorded that 474 women were murdered, mostly by partners and relatives, the highest in a decade in which the numbers have increased year after year. Due to Coronavirus COVID-19 lockdowns across the globe, the figures for 2020 are expected to be much higher. This data on deaths is compiled from news reports and victims’ families by campaign group We Will Stop Femicide, which began tracking murders of women after the government admitted it did not keep records. Government official statistics related to violence against women that do exist are unreliable and often differ from department to department.
Since a failed coup attempt in 2016, Turkey’s legal system, which has been purged of perceived disloyal elements and weaponised against the government’s critics is now even more unlikely to deliver timely justice for victims of male violence.
Sentences given to those who commit violence against women are often lenient, and judges regularly reduce their jail terms. More often than not, the sentences are simply reduced on the basis of the appearance of the accused. Men who wear ties and suits during their court appearances have usually come away with a reduced sentence. This happens so much that citizens of Turkey have coined a phrase for it: tie reduction.
Across the past two decades, Turkey has urbanised rapidly, and saw immense migration from the villages to the cities. The transformation also gave women greater opportunities for work, leisure and social mobility, but many Turkish men failed to accept the possibilities and prominence in the public space that the economic and social transformation were offering to women. As a result, most women tragically killed by their husbands, fathers or brothers were killed because they insisted on their own choices in marriage, work, clothing and appearance.
In 2011, Turkey lead the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, a Council of Europe accord on gender equality and preventing gender-based violence. Following this, Turkey passed a law in 2012 to protect women. However, this was somewhat hypocritical, as politicians associated with the ruling Justice & Development Party government also backed repressive positions such as pushing a debate on whether adultery should be a criminal offence, describing abortion as tantamount to murder, and describing women who prefer working outside the home to maternity as half persons. Only 6 years ago, in November 2014, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that women are not equal to men because of biological differences, and on several occasions has called on Turkish families to have at least three children. When someone of such power holds such hostile views towards women, how is gender-based violence and femicide going to stop?
Although femicide might seem far away from the UK, it really is closer than we may think. In 2018, according to the femicide census (https://femicidescensus.org/reports/) 149 women were killed by 147 men. 61% (91) were killed by their current or former male spouse or intimate partner, 8% (12) were killed by sons or step-sons, 3% (5) were killed by a son-in-law or ex son-in-law, and overall 95% of femicides were committed by a man known to the victim. The youngest victim was tragically aged just 14 years old, and the eldest was 100, with 23 women (16%) aged 66 or over when killed.
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Reports show that 41% (37 of 91) of women killed by a partner or former partner had separated or taken steps to separate from him, with 30% of them (11 of 37) killed within the first month and 70% (24 of 37) killed within the first year post separation. There was evidence of previous abuse or violence in over half the cases (52%) where the perpetrator was known to the victim, and at least 52% (76) perpetrators were known to have had histories of previous violence against women. Possibly the most chilling statistic, though, is that three perpetrators had killed women before.
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Despite over 50 years of feminist campaigning against male violence which has lead to worldwide success; with rape in marriage in a number of countries becoming illegal, and many domestic violence laws passed, these horrifying statistics shows that the number of women and girls dying at the hands of men is increasing.
Across the last few years, domestic violence services and refuges have been shut down or replaced with generic, low funded facilities run by those without any real expertise on crucial issues such as risk factors and why women return to violent men. 2019 government figures show that almost 24,000 people were made homeless in England as a direct result of domestic abuse. Between 2010 - 2017, councils cut funding for domestic violence refuges by almost a quarter, and last year Women's Aid found that 64% of all referrals to refuges were declined. (Women's Aid)
If finding refuge was hard, sourcing settled accommodation can be even harder. Latest government figures show that just 2% of households made homeless as a result of domestic abuse between April and December 2018 were offered social housing. Because of this, survivors often face homelessness or returning to their abusers when their time in a refuge comes to an end. Councils are only required to provide housing for domestic violence survivors if they can prove they are more vulnerable than the average homeless person. (Gov.uk)
Strangulation was a factor in 29% of the 2018 femicides, compared with 24.9% between 2009-2015. Coincidentally, at the same time increasing numbers of defendants are using the ‘rough sex’ defence and claiming that the victim consented to violent and dangerous sexual practices, resulting in a woman’s accidental death. In 8 of the 2018 killings, the perpetrator made this claim. Recently published studies found that more than a third of UK women under the age of 40 report having experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during consensual sex. (BBC) Charity We Can’t Consent to This found that 59 women had been killed in so-called ‘consensual’ violence in the UK, and the defence was successful in almost half of the 18 cases that made it to trial across the past five years, leading to a lesser verdict of manslaughter or an acquittal, therefore reducing the justice that these victims should receive.
But what exactly is the 'rough sex' defence? It has been used increasingly in the UK courts in cases of sexual violence that either ended in serious harm or murder, to justify why the violence occurred. Possibly the most high profile case involving the 'rough sex' defence was the murder of British backpacker Grace Millane in New Zealand. Her killer argued in his defence that Millane had died accidentally due to a 'sex game gone wrong' after she pursued BDSM-style sex. Rightfully, Millane's killer was eventually sentenced to life in prison. The earliest UK case with the 'rough sex' defence being used in a murder trial was in 1972, with the murder of Carole Califano, who had been trying to leave her abusive partner. By using this defence, her killer received a manslaughter sentence instead of murder. Defences like these don't just stop at rough sex. As ridiculous as these sound, there is also a 'nagging and shagging' defence where juries are persuaded that male perpetrators were justified in their violence because of their female partner's behaviour, such as decreased frequency of sex or continuous nagging. There is also the 'big penis' defence (yes, you read that right) which was successfully used buy a Florida man in 2017 to avoid a second-degree murder charge after his girlfriend died during oral sex.
Luckily for women in the UK – if we can call it that – the new domestic abuse bill, which was postponed at the end of 2019 when Boris Johnson prorogued parliament, will now include provisions against the ‘rough sex’ defence. On Monday 6th July, MPs voted in favour of the bill in the House of Commons, and the bill will now rule out ‘consent for sexual gratification’ as a defence for causing serious harm to a person. There has also been a campaign to make ‘non-fatal strangulation’ a punishable crime, as it is often only charged as common assault, despite being known to be a high-risk indicator in domestic abuse cases leading to homicide.
While the UK are making small steps in the right direction, gender-based violence and femicide is increasing particularly in Middle Eastern countries, and the more we raise awareness of the happenings, the greater chance women have of surviving.
If you have been affected by this story, or require more information, please go to the links below:
https://www.womensaid.org.uk
https://femicidescensus.org
https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk
https://www.refuge.org.uk
https://womanstrust.org.uk
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