This piece is written as a farewell to Ozgecan Aslan, a twenty-year-old university student, who was stabbed to death after she was raped. Her remains were found on 13 February, burnt and thrown into a river by three men.
I slept with a heavy heart that night and woke up even grimmer and more outraged. Another terrible piece of news from Turkey, my home country, where nearly every day men brutally kill, sexually harass, and rape women. Where we are continuously undone by desiring looks, swearing words, and grabbing hands of men, and their biggest protector: the juridical system. The experiences of being women, which transgress national, regional, and cultural boundaries, teach us to expect sexual and physical violence—from strangers, from acquaintances, from loved ones.
We all know the fear of being the last passenger on a bus alone with a male driver, especially at night. On 11 February, she took a bus from Adana to Mersin, her route from school to home. As the last passenger got off the bus, she was left alone with the driver. When he attempted to rape Ozgecan, she fought back and used pepper spray against the rapist. The driver then stabbed Ozgecan several times and bludgeoned her to death with an iron pipe.
After the murder, his father and a friend came to help him to get rid of the body—the evidence. The horrendous brutality of this murder raised public outrage in Turkey. It also revived the memory of another sad, outrageous murder, in March , of eighteen-year-old Munevver Karabulut , whose body had been dumped into a waste container in Istanbul after her head had been cut off by her boyfriend Cem Garipoglu with the help of his family.
It was partly the extreme brutality in these two cases that created a deep sense of outrage and frustration—and it must, of course, be condemned. Yet I want to emphasize here that what happened to Ozgecan is exemplary rather than exceptional. In Turkey, violence, sexual harassment, rape, and murder are parts of our everyday life.
