Laws, their interpretations, applications and effects

The reactions to our article on the Istanbul Convention were exactly the reactions I had expected. Like many subjects, the Istanbul Convention has become a topic on which people take camps without having mastered its effect, its content, its context and its meaning. Yet even to know what we are debating, there are aspects of the Convention that must first of all be separated from one another.

For example, is the subject the prevention of violence against women, or is it the language of gender that dominates this Convention and legitimizes homosexuality? If the subject is violence against women, has an impact analysis been done, or is one being done, on whether this Convention truly achieves this aim? Are we ready to open and conduct such a debate?

Seeing how prone to violence are those who, unable even to bear hearing such a question, attempt to execute people without trial, one cannot help lamenting if preventing violence against women is left to such people.

These types, who neither understand what is said nor listen, who are swept into a lynch mob by chasing after the first words they hear, are in any case the biggest source of social violence. From this mentality one can expect every kind of violence toward women, toward children, toward every person weaker than themselves. Because they are without understanding. Because they do not listen. Because they are know-it-alls. They have swallowed all the information and data whole, and have no need to listen to anything from anyone. As they defend, hooligan-style, a document whose content, meaning and effect they do not know, violence that infects everyone pours from their tongues. They defend it fanatically and without knowing its content, because beyond a certain point that Convention document has become a fetish. It has turned into a sacred object. The redemptive and protective qualities attributed to it have by now made it a subject not of sociology but of psychiatry, perhaps even of theology.

What we are saying is very clear. The statistical figures are in plain view. The date the Convention was signed is 2011, the date it began to be applied is 2014. Since then, in the name of abiding by the spirit of this Convention, a series of legal regulations aimed at so-called protection of women has been made. Under these regulations even the judicial customs that grant no tolerance to violence against women have changed radically. At the slightest complaint or family dispute, rulings in favor of the woman began to be issued, taking the woman's statement as the basis. Because in a dispute between woman and man within the family the woman's statement becomes the judge's decision too, restraining orders began to be issued immediately. Decisions taken in this direction became so widespread that the matter of husbands removed from their homes has by now grown in Turkey to a degree comparable with no other country in the world.

This alone has become a serious social problem. Moreover, it is a problem that affects negatively not only the man but rather the woman and the other members of the family. Moreover, whereas in a dispute that is the subject of a complaint between two ordinary people the case lapses when one of the parties withdraws the complaint, in domestic quarrels the matter is pursued as a public case even if the woman withdraws her complaint.

It was assumed that this and many similar new practices would be a deterrent against violence toward women, yet the time that has passed has shown that all these measures have had no deterrent effect whatsoever. Indeed, given that an increase in violence cases has been recorded since 2014, the need has arisen for a more cool-headed inquiry into the effect of the Convention or of the legal regulations on this subject.

Making laws is very easy, but seeing and calculating the social effect of the law that has been made may not be so easy. Today it can happen that the laws made to protect women themselves victimize women more and expose them more to violence.

Truly, I do not think that any of those who criticize the Convention object to judicial or law-enforcement measures being taken against violence toward women. But we must have seen sufficiently that caution is needed regarding the options that first come to mind as to the method of this.

We must know that just as laws are not our only problem, making laws is not the only solution to our problems. For we see that where everything is tied to laws, that is, where conscience is not trusted openly, conscience too takes its revenge terribly and seems to render the laws invalid. Without conscience, without compassion, without responsibility, what law could protect woman from man, child from a tyrannical parent, woman from woman, the young from the old, the worker from the employer?

As we said before, perhaps everything begins with seeing the matter mainly as violence against women. The problem is the lack of control people display in using the power they possess irresponsibly. The problem does not consist merely of men's violence toward women. This problem concerns a strong social morality that the powerful must be subject to regarding how they should treat those weaker than themselves, the wealthy the poor, the old the young.

All of this will of course be discussed separately and at length.

But violence against women is not the only subject concerning the Convention. The real objection is its language that confuses and blurs the sexes, and in this respect, even if it had no effect at all, it is impossible for such a convention to be a document that a country like Turkey would accept.