(Photo by: onceiwasmyself/Flickr)

On 14th October 2009 has been presented in Brussels the 2009 Report prepared by the European Commission for the Enlargement Strategy: although the document is moderately positive about the improvements needed to make Turkey eligible to entry into the EU, the European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn underlined that respect for human rights is a condition sine qua non for EU membership and the basis of the process of democratization.
Already on 9th June 2009 the European Court of Human Rights fined Turkey to pay 36,500 euros for failing to respect women’s rights and for not protecting them from domestic violence: equality, according to many feminist’s organizations in the country, would be guaranteed by law but actually unapplied.

From the Declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923, one of the most significant elements in the social revolution supported by the “father of country” Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the emancipation of women: the woman lost her position of inferiority, dropped the veil and its presence became gradually an important truth of social life.
Was also achieved in 1926 a new Civil Code modeled on the Swiss one, which suddenly changed the family structure, denouncing the violence by abolishing polygamy, allowing the right to divorce for both sexes, by fixing the minimum age for marriage to 15 years for women and 17 for men and equaling the value of the testimony (before that of a man was equal to that of two women).

Recently, several regulations continued the path of equality began with the revolution, so that in 90s, Turkey had a woman Prime Minister, Tansu Ciller (while in other countries, for example in Italy, has never happened): in 1998, a year before that Turkey received the formal status of candidate country by the EU, turkish Parliament ratified a new law on domestic violence; in 2001 was approved the new Code, which abolished the supremacy of man in the household and fixed to 18 years, the minimum legal age to get marry; in 2004 was amended the Penal Code in order to stiffen penalties for certain forms of “honor crimes” which involve women also today; in March 2009 has been established into the Parliament a committee under the name of “Commission on equal opportunities for men and women.”

Despite this, discrimination continues: an example is the sadly famous Beyazit Square protests of March 6, 2005, when a peaceful demonstration for International Women’s Day turned into blind violence against the approximately 150 participants, dragged by officers on coaches shots truncheon, using irritant gas. The Amnesty International’s Report 2009 says: “Laws and regulations designed to protect women and girls from violence have not been properly implemented. Underfunding and inaction of the government departments have weakened the measures envisaged by the Prime Minister issued a circular in 2006 to combat domestic violence and prevent crimes of honor. ” Little progress has been made in providing safe houses for women survivors of violence to the extent provided by law on municipalities in 2004 – at least one nursing home in all municipalities with a population exceeding 50,000 “.
The so-called “honor killings” are those where to a woman who has dishonored the family has offered the “alternative” (if can be call like this) between suicide or be segregated in a room until she decides to do it: if she doesn’t want to do it, the duty to kill her has given to the youngest male of the family in the hope that at the process will be a more lenient sentence. According to a survey on domestic violence, 39% of Turkish women think it is the right of an husband beating his wife in several cases, including a refusal to have sex, to have exceeded the costs, or to have cooked badly: in this survey is then shown that education is crucial to eradicate these beliefs and that women with instruction are unlikely to stay under silly macho codes.

On 9 November 2009 in response to a question tabled in Parliament by MP Fatma Kurtulan of Demokratika Tolum Partisi (DTP, the Democratic Party and pro-Kurdish), the Minister for Justice Sadullah Ergin revealed even more alarming data: 42% women is a victim of physical assaults and sexual violence incidents; in the first six months of 2009 the number of aggressions increased much as 1400% compared to 2002.
Even murder cases widened from 83 in 2003 to 806 in 2008: a sad average of 4.5 women per day killed.
Moreover, the share of Turkish women who sit in Parliament is still equal to about 9% and sometimes less than the municipal level.
More positive data about education: Turkish women seem to have made significant progress in recent years that have brought to similar levels and in some cases higher than the European average.

Europe can be an excellent springboard and awareness of the problem and a big incentive not to succumb to ignorance: the solution is surely a democratic debate, not exasperate a counterproductive attachment to a pretended European identity, with the hope that the cry of the thousands of victims will not remain unheard.