Women In Turkey Take To Streets Over Brutal Femicide
New Age Islam News Bureau
06 October 2024
• Women In Turkey Take To Streets Over Brutal Femicide
• Qatar Chamber Official, Ibtihaj al-Ahmadani, Inaugurates ‘Arabian Women Exhibition'
• Trapped In Gaza: One Woman's Nightmare Of A Year − With No Way Out During War
• Report Reveals Rising Persecution Of Women Journalists In Turkey, With Two Detained In September
• Turkey's High Inflation Erodes Alimony Payments, Leaving Women In Financial Hardship
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/turkey-brutal-femicide-ibtihaj/d/133369
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Women In Turkey Take To Streets Over Brutal Femicide
Hundreds of women gather around the historic walls.
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October 06 2024
The We Will Stop Femicide Platform on Oct. 5 organized a demonstration for İkbal Uzuner and Ayşegül Halil, two 19-year-old women who were brutally murdered by Semih Çelik in Istanbul’s historic walls.
Hundreds of women gathered around the Adrianople Gate in the Fatih district, where the 19-year-old murderer killed and decapitated İkbalUzuner before dying by suicide.
Women gathered in front of the historical city walls, where the murder took place, and held a banner reading “We will end impunity. We will stop the harassment and murder.”
The country was outraged after it was revealed that the murderer threw the woman’s head from the city walls, with the victim’s mother present at the scene. Later, it was also discovered that SemihÇelik had killed another woman named AyşegülHalil in the Eyüpsultan district.
During the protest, signs reading "Ministry, open your eyes, women were killed here" were displayed, alongside chants such as "Violence will not go unpunished," "Perpetrators will not go unpunished," "AKP, don’t just watch, enforce the law," and "You will never walk alone."
Source: Www.duvarenglish.com
https://www.duvarenglish.com/women-in-turkey-take-to-streets-over-brutal-femicides-news-65043
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Qatar Chamber Official, Ibtihaj al-Ahmadani, Inaugurates ‘Arabian Women Exhibition'
Qatar Chamber board member Ibtihaj al-Ahmadani
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October 05, 2024
Qatar Chamber board member Ibtihaj al-Ahmadani inaugurated Saturday the 11th edition of the “Arabian Woman Exhibition” at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre (DECC).
The ceremony was attended by leading businesswomen and entrepreneurs from Qatar and other countries, along with Tamader al-Marri, director of Vogue Event Company, the exhibition’s organising company.
The exhibition, which will run until October 10 under the sponsorship of the Qatari Businesswomen Forum (QBWF), features 200 domestic and foreign booths, showcasing the works of more than 170 notable female entrepreneurs from Qatar.
Following the inauguration, al-Ahmadani, who is also QBWF chairperson, toured the pavilions and was briefed about the most recent designs and items created by Qatari and other designers in the sectors of fashion, accessories, and women's products.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, she noted that Qatari women have achieved significant successes across various sectors and praised the unwavering support and encouragement of the wise leadership to Qatari women.
Al-Ahmadani thanked the Ministry of Social Development and Family for its continued support of Qatari women, particularly productive families, which led to the holding of the Second Arab Productive Families Exhibition in Doha, in co-operation with the League of Arab States and, in co-ordination with the Union of Arab Chambers.
As QBWF chairperson, she invited Qatari businesswomen to join the forum in its new launch, emphasising that it serves as a platform for Qatari businesswomen and entrepreneurs to promote their projects both locally and abroad.
Al-Marri said the exhibition is beneficial to Qatari female designers and entrepreneurs, pointing out that Qatar has become a significant destination for major exhibitions and events.
The official further noted that this edition features several accompanying events, including an awareness campaign on breast cancer prevention, in co-operation with the Qatar Cancer Society, the participation of the Ministry of Social Development and Family, which aims to support productive families and introduce the “From Home” initiative, which supports national productive projects, and the participation of “Scale 7”, the first business incubator for fashion and design in Qatar.
Source: Www.Gulf-times.com
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Trapped in Gaza: One woman's nightmare of a year − with no way out during war
Kim Hjelmgaard
05-10-2024
All Nour Swirki ever knows is she must find a way to evacuate.
But for different reasons, she can't do it. Sometimes, it's because the car that's supposed to whisk her away to safety − away from Gaza to her children in Egypt − won't start. Sometimes, her bags are too heavy to carry.
As of Monday, it's been a year of fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, a consequence of the militant group's Oct. 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people in Israel and saw 251 kidnapped and dragged back to the Palestinian enclave. Since the war broke out, more than 41,000 people in Gaza have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Much in Gaza, besides lives, has been lost during this period: entire families, whole neighborhoods, the Palestinian enclave's rich cultural heritage from mosques to libraries. The war has changed the Middle East. Hamas' leadership has been decimated, but with a negotiated cease-fire still out of reach, the war has threatened to spark a wider regional conflict between Israel and Iran, as well as Hamas allies in Lebanon and Yemen. It's ushered in fresh scrutiny of the decades-old plight of Palestinians. It has brought tragedy and trauma to Israel but also isolated it on the world stage. The war could impact the U.S. election.
For Swirki, 36, a Palestinian TV journalist who has recurring nightmares about never being able to escape Gaza, it's been a year of doing her job while trying to survive herself. That's something that as of late September at least 116 journalists and media workers have not been able to do, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
As the war has dragged on, time for Swirki has become indistinct. It's become harder for her to understand or even think about the devastation of the past year. Many of the people and things she knew, many of the streets she knew, are no longer there to see or touch. There have been too many losses and separations for her to make sense of.
Their names are Jamal, 11, and Alia, 13. Her children. She and her husband, Salem, also a journalist in Gaza, evacuated their kids to Cairo in April, where they are staying with their mother's sister and parents.
The family of four has not been together since. In her darker moments, Swirki wonders if they ever will. "I am relieved they are in a safe place. I miss them so much," she said. "I just want to survive to meet them again."
They are among almost 2 million Gazans − 9 out of every 10, according to the United Nations − who have been displaced internally at least once since Oct. 7, 2023.
Their house in Gaza City was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. They have fled for safer shelter four times. Like most Gazans, they have lacked access to adequate food, clean water, sanitation and health care.
A week before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Nour Swirki was posting on Facebook about how she found it funny that her son was making short videos about soccer game results rather than studying for his math exam.
"I'm thinking about how life around us passes in parallel worlds far from here, and how one can not be present in his life but only witness its passing. Things and time pass without meaning, without purpose," she writes.
In Rafah, in southern Gaza near the border with Egypt, the family escaped the misery of having to live in a tent, where camps stretch for miles and spill into empty or decimated fields, streets and lots.
"There was no infrastructure. There was literally no place to go," Swirki said of the family's time in Rafah. "Our clothes were dirty. There was no way to wash. It was very tough for me as a mother."
In February and March, it became apparent that Israel was preparing to launch an all-out offensive on Rafah as part of its efforts to hunt and defeat Hamas and free Israel's hostages.
Already, Israel's military had launched airstrikes on Rafah that appeared to Palestinians sheltering there to be largely indiscriminate, though Israel disputed this. On Feb. 12, more than 100 people died, according to estimates from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and other other aid groups, in Rafah in airstrikes that some media described as the "Super Bowl Massacre" because it coincided with the Super Bowl.
"The psychological condition of the children was getting worse. They were losing weight. They kept asking us to take them to a safer place," Swirki said. "They couldn't stand hearing the bombing and shelling."
Yet for the Swirkis, the decision to send their children to Cairo still wasn't an easy one. In fact, they had been discussing it intensely on and off for months. They were hopelessly conflicted about what to do.
As journalists, they felt obligated to be in the field as much as they could to document the war's impact on Gaza. Many of their colleagues had paid the highest price − their lives − to do just that. Over and over again journalists in Gaza in the last year have spoken, sometimes live on air, about how Israel's forces have phoned them up and told them that they and their families are going to be targeted for attack. Then the attacks came. Israel strongly disputes any suggestions it is deliberately targeting journalists but the belief that they are is widely shared among Gaza's journalists.
"These shields and these helmets will not protect us, they are just slogans that we wear," said Salman Al-Bashir, a TV news anchor and reporter for Palestine TV as he removed his protective gear with the word "Press" emblazoned across it and broke down on air in November after learning his colleague had been killed while reporting outside a hospital.
However, she felt that Alia in particular, at a time in her life when she was dealing with the onset of her menstrual cycle, needed to be close to her mother for guidance and help navigating the changes to her body.
Nour Swirki didn't take any pictures of the family together as they put Jamal and Alia on a bus in Rafah and handed over their passports. She felt that to do so was to tempt fate and acknowledge she may never see them again.
She hoped she was making the right decision. A few weeks later, Israel captured the Rafah border crossing, closing it to all civilians as part of a military offensive against Hamas in the area.
In recent weeks, Israel's military has withdrawn most of its troops from Gaza, and major ground operations there appear to be slowly winding down as Israel focuses its attention on Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has launched, from its base in Lebanon, more than 9,300 missiles at Israel since Oct. 7, according to government figures. Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in late September and has started what it's called "limited" ground incursions into Lebanon to further erode the group's fighting capabilities. Iran is bracing for Israeli retaliation after firing about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel for its killing of Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders.
Cease-fire and hostage deal talks between Israel and Hamas, conducted by mediators Qatar, Egypt and the U.S., have been stalled for months. And in the year since Israel launched a war in Gaza as a result of Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks, the humanitarian impact has been so enormous the numbers struggle to convey the story.
In addition to the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have have been killed, a further 10,000 are still missing, likely buried under fragments of stone, brick, steel, concrete and other debris.
According to the U.N., 60% of Gaza's buildings are damaged or destroyed entirely. More than half of residential homes are gone. Only 17 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are functional, most only partially. An estimated half a million people in Gaza are facing what the U.N. and other aid groups describe as "catastrophic" food insecurity.
Many of Gaza's schools, universities, sports halls, roads, supermarkets and places of worship no longer exist. Aid groups say hundreds of children who need life-saving surgeries and urgent medication have not been able to leave Gaza for the West Bank, a separate Palestinian enclave controlled by Israel's military, or countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In mid-September, the World Health Organization was able to evacuate dozens of sick kids.
Fadi Abed, a Gazan who works for the humanitarian medical organization MedGlobal and has been helping vaccinate children against polio, said that after a year of war, the thing that shocks him the most is when he sees buildings in Gaza that are still standing, not the other way around.
Gaza’s Health Ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters in its death count, but it says that, as of Sept. 25, at least 6,297 women and at least 11,355 children have been killed in Israel's latest war with Hamas.
Israel's military says that more than 17,000 of those it has killed in Gaza have been militants. About 350 Israeli soldiers have died in combat in Gaza since Oct. 27, when its ground operation was launched.
The death toll on the Palestinian side has not been confined to Gaza. About 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7 last year, according to the U.N., as Israel has increased assaults there as part of what it says are operations to root out terrorists. More than 2,000 people, according to Lebanese authorities, have also been killed in Lebanon as Israel has targeted Hamas' ally Hezbollah in special operations and missile attacks in Beirut and other parts of the country.
Israel has fought multiple wars with Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, as well as coalitions of Arab-nation forces, as part of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that's one of the longest running in modern history. At the center of this conflict is a dispute over territory, security, Israel's right to exist and Palestinian rights and self-governance.
"The thought that was invading my head was: 'I'm going to lose them all one by one,'" said Tareq Hajjaj, a Gazan who entered Egypt in April with his wife and son about a month before Israel closed the Rafah crossing.
Hajjaj is a journalist whose efforts to stay alive in Gaza as he chronicled the war USA TODAY previously wrote about. He had been offered an earlier opportunity to leave Gaza, but he turned it down because he was not able to take his blind mother, who suffered from diabetes. After she died from lack of medication, he was offered another chance.
Hajjaj has not found exile easy. He is continuing to report on Gaza from Cairo. He wants, ultimately, to join his brother in the U.S. In most respects, his life is immeasurably better. He can take his 19-month-old son, Qais, on play dates or to the pool. His family has regained many of the simple freedoms they lost in Gaza.
"When I see a bridge, for example, I think: 'Why can't we in Gaza have bridges?' When I see a road, I say to myself: 'Why don't we have such roads in Gaza? Why can't we live this way in Gaza, with freedom? Why can't we have an airport? A train system? Why do we, as Palestinians, have to leave our country to feel safe?'"
There are only three land border crossings in and out of Gaza. Two are controlled by Israel and the third, the Rafah one, had been administered by Hamas until Israel captured it in early May.
Since May, Nour and Salem Swirki have been living in a tent that is situated on the grounds of a hospital in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza. About 100 other journalists are also living in this area.
At the entrance to her tent, Nour Swirki has pinned a scrawled, handwritten note that manages to strike both a lightly humorous and defiant tone: "Nour villa: displaced Gazan woman, mother and journalist," it reads.
Swirki says she feels safer being close to the hospital even though Israel's military over the past year has repeatedly struck medical facilities in Gaza, where it says Hamas hides weapons or themselves.
The one's she can't forget usually involve children. Some who have had arms or legs amputated. Others who she sees on the street asking for food. The ones whose small, floppy, lifeless bodies show up at the hospital.
They get updates on whether Ali has been practicing her routines for "Dabkeh," a popular Palestinian group dance that is accompanied by traditional wind instruments and singing. (She has. But it's not the same in Cairo, she said.)
"Sad," was the only word Jamal offered when asked to describe his feelings about being separated from his parents when he briefly joined the call with his sister and mother.
On July 18, Nour Swirki's birthday, a man called her out of the blue asking where she was because he had something to deliver to her. She was out reporting. When they found each other he delivered a cake.
Source: Www.Usatoday.Com
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Report reveals rising persecution of women journalists in Turkey, with two detained in September
06/10/2024
Two women journalists were detained in Turkey in September 2024, according to a new report by the Mezopotamya Women Journalists’ Platform (MKG). The report highlights growing pressures on female journalists, including arrests, harassment and intimidation, as media freedom continues to be suppressed across the country.
The report points to a systematic increase in the targeting of women journalists, particularly those covering controversial topics. Rabia Önver, a reporter for JINNEWS, had her home raided by police in Colemêrg (Hakkari) after reporting on drug trafficking and prostitution, underscoring what the MKG describes as “systematic repression” of women in the field. “This event shows the extent to which the pressures have become systematic,” the report stated.
Additionally, the report detailed how TV100 correspondent CananAltıntaş was attacked and threatened while covering a funeral. “The attack highlights the challenges women journalists face while working in the field,” the report added, noting similar incidents of abuse against other female journalists in recent months. In İzmir, the home of MücadeleBirliği newspaper reporter LütfiyeBurcu Kara was also raided by authorities.
“Journalists are tasked with uncovering the truth, but judicial pressure is making this increasingly difficult,” the MKG noted, adding that the determination to report the truth remains strong despite the escalating crackdown. “As government pressure on journalists increases, so does the resolve to uncover the truth.”
The report also honoured the legacy of fallen women journalists, including NagihanAkarsel and GurbetelliErsöz, who continue to inspire resistance among female journalists. The platform outlined the extensive violations against women journalists in September, noting: “Two journalists were attacked, two faced home raids, and two were detained. Additionally, four journalists experienced mistreatment, one was threatened, and two had their reporting activities obstructed.”
The platform warned that ongoing harassment, combined with a lack of protections for women journalists, has led to an alarming increase in rights violations. “In September, one female journalist was imprisoned, two arrest warrants were issued, two investigations were opened, and one journalist faced a lawsuit.”
The MKG report concluded with a list of imprisoned women journalists, including ElifErsoy, editor of Yürüyüş Magazine, and HaticeDuman, owner and editor of Atılım Newspaper, both of whom remain behind bars due to their work.
Source: Medyanews.Net
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Turkey's high inflation erodes alimony payments, leaving women in financial hardship
6 October 2024
The Women’s Solidarity Foundation has released a report detailing the difficulties women encounter in securing alimony payments following divorce in Turkey, especially amid the country's economic challenges.
In addition to a significant amount of court-ordered alimony payments not being made, the existing alimony amounts are not keeping pace with the high inflation rate, further exacerbating the financial struggles of divorced women, according to the report.
The report, prepared by lawyers ZekiyeKaracaBoz and CerenAkçabay, analyzed 155 divorce cases across 16 provinces in the country. Accordingly, 44% of court-ordered alimony payments are not made. Some 48% of the surveyed of the women were unemployed, compared to 9% of the men, and 47% of the women stated that they had no income at all.
The report noted that the vast majority of alimony payments granted to women were below 1,000 Turkish liras, with the average amount standing at 1,179 liras, or just 6.9% of the national minimum wage (1 US dollar = 34.09 Turkish liras). These low payments fail to cover even basic living expenses, and with rising inflation, the situation for women continues to deteriorate. Despite this, 44% of men are avoiding alimony payments altogether, forcing 70% of women to resort to legal enforcement, which often proves ineffective.
CerenAkçabay, a faculty member at İstanbul Okan University’s law school, told bianet, “The socio-legal challenges we identified in 2019 regarding access to alimony remain unchanged in 2024. Alimony amounts have diminished, and payments are not being made. With rising inflation, alimony leaves women on the brink of hunger."
Akçabay also emphasized the prevalence of violence in divorce cases, saying, “In 88% of the cases we examined, domestic violence was present. These women are facing both economic and physical abuse."
Akçabay called for reforms that take into account the country’s economic conditions, pointing to to the Court of Cassation’s precedent, stating that alimony decisions must reflect living conditions and economic realities.
There is ongoing debate in Turkey about limiting the duration of alimony payments. The Islamist New Welfare (YenidenRefah) Party proposed a bill in May 2024 that would cap alimony at five years, with expired payments being covered by a fund managed by the Family and Social Services Ministry.
Akçabay criticized this proposal, arguing that it would make alimony even less accessible for women. “Restricting alimony would make women fleeing domestic violence even more vulnerable. At a time when alimony is already insufficient, such reforms would impose further bureaucratic barriers and unfairly stigmatize women seeking their rights,” she said.
Collecting and sharing data on gender-based violence from the Justice Ministry, Interior Ministry, and Family and Social Services Ministry to develop more effective policies.
Ensuring that courts consider security measures, such as shelter and childcare support, before ruling in divorce cases involving claims of domestic violence.
Taking steps to ensure fairness in divorce settlements, including giving women more time to consult with psychologists or social workers, and reviewing settlement agreements to confirm they are made of free will before court approval.
Source: Bianet.org
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/turkey-brutal-femicide-ibtihaj/d/133369