The problem of power and morality

Were we simply not noticing before, or is violence against women really increasing with each passing day?

According to one statistic, there has been a 1400 percent increase in the number of murders of women over the last seven years. By contrast, in the same period there has been a 30 percent increase in sexual harassment crimes. In addition to the murders widely covered in the media, such as those of Ayşe Paşalı, Tuğba Dilek, Arzu Yıldırım and Ünzile Çalışkan, according to this statistic nearly every day three murders with similar characteristics are committed.

Yet we are going through a process in which the level of social awareness regarding women's rights has risen relatively more. This process is taking place on strong sociological grounds defined by urbanization, rising prosperity and women's greater participation in social life. In return for the increase these sociological developments have brought in women's social status and level of economic independence, one would also expect women to have grown strong enough not to be exposed to violence.

Moreover, the political arrangements made in the meantime set much more defined limits for protecting women against violence. In the 12 September referendum, it was secured by constitutional guarantee that arrangements which could be made in favor of women in the direction of positive discrimination cannot be objected to on the ground that they violate the constitution's principle of equality. The Ministry of Family and Social Policies is dwelling on the matter with sensitivity. Minister Fatma Şahin's latest proposal for an electronic-bracelet arrangement for those identified as inclined to violence against women also shows how strong a sensitivity has developed in general in this direction. Şahin's proposal and initiatives on this matter drew great appreciation and support from every section of society, women and men alike.

So when it comes to violence against women, it is in fact met with the same great hatred without any gender distinction. Women's status is making far more gains than in past times; that is, their social status is rising, their participation in social life and employment is increasing, and yet. All this increase runs parallel to an increase in violence against women as well. In fact this is the real great paradox we should dwell on.

The increase in violence against women cannot be brushed aside with a sexist explanation. Doing so may please many feminists, but in truth the relationship between violence and gender is not a relationship that can be verified at all beyond superficial and reactive assessments.

Truly, one of the first explanations that may come to mind for the increase in women's status alongside the increase in the violence they face is the conflict between traditional gender roles and new gender roles. Not by starting from each individual example but in aggregate, it can be said that these roles set in motion different cultural codes by distorting them.

One of the more specific causes of this increase in violence is the advertising role played by the manner in which it is displayed in the media. This role can be a trigger for other cases. Its effect on the increase in suicide cases has been definitely established. In a place where no suicide had ever occurred, after one case occurs, others follow one after another as if they were next in line. In the month following Marilyn Monroe's suicide (1962), the highest suicide rates in American history were recorded. None of these suicides stemmed from grief over Monroe; each was pursuing its own story but was probably triggered by being affected by Monroe's suicide. This effect was clearly visible in the Batman suicides in 2000 and in a series of suicide cases that occurred later in Kastamonu and elsewhere. The fact that violence against women also occurs almost by copying one another brings this effect to mind.

The speech that Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez, President of Religious Affairs, gave last week at the Diyanet Women's Branches iftar put forward a much more apt diagnosis of the true origin of violence, going beyond the sexist explanation. Görmez was saying, "it is not possible to explain these events by gender"; on the contrary, "the problem is simply a problem of power and morality." A problem concerning a strong social morality that the strong must be subject to as to how they should behave toward those weaker than themselves. When a man is strong enough to exercise physical violence against a woman, how much, and for what reason, should he control this power of his?

In his study Suicide, the famous sociologist Emile Durkheim attributes women's lesser involvement in cases of violence, contrary to what is supposed, not to their being less prone to violence but to their having less power. Among a series of other examples on this point, he gives as the most important one cases of abortion. In cases of abortion there may be instances in which men are also involved, but the great majority are carried out by women, and beings who cannot defend themselves in any way can very easily be torn apart and killed. So the problem is not about gender; it is, in Prof. Görmez's apt expression, a problem of controlling power with morality. How can this power, which everyone potentially holds in some way against beings weaker than himself, be controlled in a beneficial way? How can it be ensured that this power gives rise not to violence but to compassion, mercy and justice? That is the whole matter..

Is not Ramadan precisely an educational process concerning the control of this very power we possess, teaching us to think of those who are in a weaker position than we are? Is it possible to leave Ramadan without taking the lesson that nothing we possess, no power, actually belongs to us, that it has been entrusted to us, and that we must manage these things responsibly, but always with others in mind?

Could we have lived a Ramadan without thinking of the Somalis, the Africans, the Syrians living in hunger, our next-door neighbors or our distant neighbors?