Was she wearing a mini skirt?

Enough, this is enough. At this point, words fail. But this barbarity, this perversion, does not seem to fail. There is a new femicide every day; there is a new rape every day.

It was only last weekend when a 19-year-old girl was raped near Bağdat Street, a prestigious street on the Anatolian side of Istanbul and the street by which she lived. 

You must have read it in the papers. The victim had dinner with her friends in Kadıköy. At the end of the evening, she took a dolmuş (the Turkish-style collective taxi) from Kadıköy to Bostancı. She got off the dolmuş and started walking home when she realized somebody was following her.   

When she turned onto her own street, the attacker, with a knife in his hand, covered the girl’s mouth with his other hand and threatened, “If you make a sound I will riddle you.” He raped her in a backyard.
 
This is not happening in a far-away place; this is happening right next to where we live.

The president and the prime minister issue a statement on every matter; somehow, they have been quiet on this matter. 

The family minister has been talking about the Özgecan bill, named after university student Özgecan Aslan, who was raped and killed by a minibus driver in the southern province of Mersin on her way home from school last year, but nothing is happening. 

Several doubts come to one’s mind: Can it be that they think, “This is the destiny of being a woman in Turkey?” Are they trying to say, “Well, they should not have been born a woman?”

Column after column, article after article, we are writing but nothing happens. 

Moreover, shameless men in this country held a survey on Twitter. The question: “What kind of fun was this ‘girl’ having at 3:00 in the morning at Bağdat Street?”

The options were “hide and seek, skipping rope, I do not know…”

Can you imagine? Something as horrible as a rape had occurred but an inferior mindset is able to ask this question with a sarcastic, mocking and arrogant attitude...

God damn all of you! How can you ask such a question? The girl has been raped, is there anything further to this? Damn your sense of humor! 


What was she doing out at 3? 

The majority of men in this country think similarly. They put the word girl in quotation marks because if a girl is out on the street at that hour she is not a virgin. Well, then she should not have resisted and had intercourse with him, they mean to say. She deserved whatever she went through, they mean. 

I want to say, “I hope God takes care of all of you.” Meanwhile the girl narrowly escaped. The pervert had a knife in his hand. For her to resist, God forbid, means she would have ended up like Özgecan. 

In the Özgecan case, all hell broke loose. And then what? Every day and every night an Özgecan incident is taking place in this country.

And some pathetic mentalities still focus on the hour of the rape, questioning the clothes of the victim. 
We do not want to hear the words “but” and “however” in these violent incidents, attacks, rapes and harassments against women. 

He is scum. He is married scum. Full stop. He should be punished with the maximum penalty.

We do not know in advance but he might enjoy a reduced sentence by the court. Maybe they will say she had “consented” when she was taken into a backyard with a knife at her throat because she did not shout? 

The pervert has a long criminal record. Will the court see “good conduct” in him? 

We have seen similar cases. This is why we want the Özgecan bill to pass. 

Is that too much?