Grabbing and groping ‘Western women’

Belgin Akaltan - belgin.akaltan@hdn.com.tr

AP Photo

How the hell did they find their way from Istanbul’s Taksim Square to Cologne, Germany, this New Year’s Eve?  

I am talking about the deplorable situation of those primitive crowds, the mass molesters… We have quite a lot of them here and, now, it seems we have succeeded in exporting them to certain big cities in Europe. 

What we have experienced all our lives, as modern Turkish women, that awfully shameful phenomenon; the one that we have developed so many defensive tactics and shields against, the one that has wounded our souls and made our characters rather bitter and our faces sullen; this sour feature of our society; I now see that cities of Europe are being infected by the same illness… The unknowing European women, in this recent case, the poor women of Cologne, have been given a dose of this unacceptable, unbearable, inhuman, horrific, life-shaking malady. 

We, here, first came across them in masses (We have come across them individually at all times, in all dimensions, on all the streets of Istanbul) in 2006. It was, again, a New Year’s Eve and just like in Cologne, they attacked and harassed women who were having fun at the popular square of my beloved city, Taksim Square.  

The Taksim mass harassments were shameful, horrific, dishonorable, unexplainable… It was a shocking behavior of hillbillies, probably from the ghettos of the city, uneducated and unemployed men, acting with mob psychology… 

Then, as typical Turks, we forgot the incident. However, the event repeated itself the next year. Turkish women stopped going to Taksim Square. Only a few unknowing tourists were wondering the square innocently and they found themselves almost mass raped. I cannot forget the image of a Far Eastern looking woman climbing the top of a bus stop escaping from the male animals beneath… 

Since then, everybody stopped going to Taksim Square on New Year’s Eve. Even street parties in nearby neighborhoods ceased. Now, there is an average of five plain clothes and five more uniformed police officers at Taksim for every standing person. As far as I know, the harassment incidents have decreased. The herds of animals who wander there cannot find any women because the area is full of only them. Apparently, we have exported some of them to Germany. 

Just as the rest of the civilized society, I had given a lot of thought in 2006 and 2007 to understand why this was happening at Taksim. 

In a nut a shell, I think it comes from the fundamentals of the conservative male mentality, the conservative Turkish and, inevitably, the Middle Eastern male mentality that sees women in two categories. One is the heavenly and unreachable “mother and wife” type while the other is the “loose Western women” type. And we, the normally dressed, modern Turkish women fall into the second category.

These animals cannot look in a woman’s eye and speak to a woman normally, let alone flirt or have a friendship, an ordinary human relationship with a woman. They can only stare from a distance, with “dark sparkles” in their eyes… Modern women are unreachable, way out of their league for these men. Normal sex is out of question for single men and women in a conservative society… 

When these “unreachable” women come as close as 20 centimeters to them, when there is some alcohol consumption, when there is some evil encouragement from the mob, the result is Taksim Square and Cologne’s central train station. 

Dear Cologne residents: Those thousands of harassers and attackers cannot be cured or tamed in one generation, or in two generations. You might have a chance with their grandchildren in or around 2045. 

This Middle Eastern culture that we, in Turkey, are being dragged into so fast and so mercilessly is such a thing folks. It is the wrong interpretation of what I otherwise believe is a peaceful, just, reasonable religion on earth.   

The women of this country know only too well this distorted, perverted approach and we have been fighting this stance all our lives, minus 13 years. 

A word for Cologne women: I know you have been caught off-guard this year. I know you will come prepared next time. Do not let go of your squares and train stations. Defend your way of life. I am sure we will have a lot to learn from you… Go girls…


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