Geography is the Destiny of a Land
By: İlayda Güner
Tags: Equality, Culture, Femicide, Killing, Turkey

We have a saying in my country Turkey that goes as “Geography is the destiny of a land.” However, this phrase has been confusing me ever since I was a little kid. Isn’t this the land where the myths of Athena, Hecate, and other powerful goddesses were originated from? Isn’t this the land where Hittite Queens ruled alongside Kings as their equal? Isn’t this the land where women had the right to vote before many living in European countries did? If geography was in fact the destiny of us then why is my country becoming a mass grave for women as days go by?

Only in the last year, there have been 474 women killings.

Actually, cross that; 474 murderers decided to take the lives of 474 innocent women. There have been 474 newspaper articles that were consisting of less than one thousand words. Imagine filling a whole life into third-page news. Those women, their dreams, their aspirations, their life that was robbed from them became just two words to trend on Twitter the next day. For all, I know it could be my best friend’s name that will be trending on social media yesterday morning or my neighbor or my teacher, my doctor, or maybe even mine…

Wall Of Shame: To bring attention to killings a coffee chain in Istanbul, Turkey has put up 440 shoe pairs on the exterior wall of a building in the memory of victims.

We are told that womanhood is a blessing but I think in today’s world its a curse in disguise. People call it a blessing because women can give birth yet no one blinks an eye when women can’t access sanitary products, can’t get the medical care they need, or when they are not given the choice to give birth or not. Maybe you think that we don’t live in the 18th century where women can’t work, vote, or get an education; they are equal to men in almost every area so what is this girl talking about? Yeah, it is true that we no longer live in the dark ages where a woman could have been burned at the stake for the sole reason of being a redhead. But today a woman can be stabbed to death because she wanted to break up with her boyfriend. Now tell me how much we have progressed since the dark ages?

The blood of those innocent souls in on our hands as humankind. We failed to recognize the fact that it’s not the acts of individuals that harm the society and women and those who identify as a women instead it’s the collectively shared knowledge of humankind that allows such discriminative notions to be seeded inside people. These harmful ideas about genders and sexes start from a young age. Girls are taught that the way men show their love is through aggression once they start kindergarten. If a boy pulls your hair, it means that he likes you… If he is mean to you in the playground it means that he cares about you. If he calls you names then he definitely has a crush on you. Imagine thinking someone expresses their love for you through causing you pain and degrading you, it seems like such an absurd idea, right? Then why are we programming our children to accept such behaviors? Even in the literature young people are constantly exposed to such harmful concepts. For instance growing up most of us read about how Mr. Darcy and Mr. Rochester and likewise were authoritative, dismissing, and even time to time controlling towards the women in their lives. But today we see those men as the epitome of romance and idolize the relationships portrayed in those novels Don’t get me wrong I am not being dismissive of the amazing female authors of these books. They simply lived in a time where female existence was enough. Now times have changed and tolerated the existence of a human being is the bare minimum. We should all remember; Existence is not a privilege, it is supposed to be a given.

Over and over we are told that women should be pure for men to take their innocence from them, they should be respectful, they should be educated but not in the areas that belong to men, they should be able to cook, clean and take care of their houses. They should please the men in their lives and if they fail to do so it is not so unexpected to end up dead in the middle of the street with a gunshot in their abdomen. I want my daughters to grow up without being poisoned with such teachings that have been unfortunately embedded in those before us. For this, we should all work together and recognize that destiny has nothing to do with the land but rather with the people on it. I want to honor those who have been the victims of the systematic failure of humankind itself.

May they all rest in peace.