DİKASUM: Turkish state surrenders woman to femicide
DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) - A few hours before Hacer Aladak's husband strangled her in the town of Ergani, in Diyarbakır province, she was on her way to a women's shelter run by the Turkish state. Women's groups are asking who is responsible for allowing Aladak's husband to kill her while she was supposedly under state protection.
Turkey was the first signatory to the Istanbul Convention against violence against women, which obliges it to found women's shelters in every one of the country's 81 provinces. Turkey has still not done so. In addition, the ongoing lack of basic right to life for women in the shelters that do exist is a growing concern. The Ministry of Family and Social Policies has come under fire before for taking no actions to prevent the wave of femicides in the country. Now, women's groups are asking how state agencies permitted the death of Hacer Aladak, a woman supposedly under the protection of the state.
Within the first years of Aladak's six-year marriage to her husband Musa six years ago, she began to be subjected to physical, sexual, economic and psychological violence. She repeatedly requested help from the police for her own abuse and reported that Musa was sexually abusing her young children, but received no reply.
Aladak ultimately left for a state-run women's shelter, but she fled the shelter to her father's house on May 12, 2015. As she began receiving threats from her husband and his relatives, she left her father's house on May 20, saying she was going to the local security station in order to return to the women's shelter. Hours later, women's groups learned that her husband had strangled her in their home in front of her children's eyes.
The DİKASUM Women's Information Center held a meeting of the press yesterday to air their concerns about the events with the attendance of Diyarbakır Metropolitan Co-mayor Gültan Kışanak. The women's center workers are demanding that the state explain how Aladak was sent to her husband's home that day and why there was no protection for her or her children, who she had reported were being sexually abused.
DİKASUM has appealed to the state prosecutor about the killing and about the ongoing danger of sexual abuse against Aladak's children, but received a negative response.
"They're trying to cover up Hacer's killing with red tape," said Halime Sabuncu, social services expert at DİKASUM. "Social services experts have met with the Republican Prosecutor about the children's abuse, but were told that abuse was not at the top of the prosecutor's agenda; only murder." The women's groups said the prosecutor's attitude has left them pessimistic. Aladak's husband Musa has not been arrested in the case.
(cm/nt)
