It Doesn’t Matter If They Started #ChallengeAccepted. Turkish Women Want To Be Heard, Too.
Do I think selfies will fix our problems? No. Am I glad to see Turkish women take up space? Yes.
For me, it all started with my mother.
On Sunday, she posted a black and white selfie of her radiant smile, accepting a challenge from one of her good friends and colleagues. “I am compelled to speak my mind,” she wrote underneath in her native tongue, Turkish, “We have to teach men that they should not just love and respect their mothers but all women.” She received 58 likes and her comments led to a small but vibrant conversation below, including clap emojis and a bunch of hearts.
A 27-year-old woman named Pınar Gültekin was murdered by her ex-boyfriend on July 16. His alleged reasoning? Jealousy. When her body was found five days later, my heart broke, along with millions of people who never knew her and will never get to meet her. People took to social media, sharing photos of Pınar laughing by the beach or posing in a long dress before a night out. Some even added angel wings to an old photo in black and white, and claimed she was now in heaven.
No matter what we tell ourselves so we can ignore that violence against women is a structural issue — not only in Turkey but all around the world, Pınar becomes a part of a toxic and deadly history and future. She is one of hundreds of women who will be remembered as victims of domestic violence in 2020. So far this year, at least 177 women were murdered by men, says We Will End Femicide Platform, a Turkish organization tracking domestic violence in the country. I see such news quite frequently on my news feed along with a photo of the victim in black and white, and all I can do is pray that my loved ones are safe.
On Monday, I was in my bed scrolling through a bunch of black and white photos, rolling my eyes at what they are trying to achieve. Is it going to bring Pınar back? Is it going to keep me, my friends or my family safe? As my non-Turkish friends started participating in what is now globally known as #ChallengeAccepted, I saw the message change between my Turkish social media circles and American, and got more hopeless. For me, all of this had become a missed opportunity to raise awareness about an injustice that may not even be corrected in my lifetime.
During my daily scroll on Tuesday, however, I saw that some high-profile figures started talking about how a perhaps trivial movement was initiated to draw attention to the plight of Turkish women. Actor Florence Pugh used the #IstanbulConventionSavesLives to emphasize a 2011 European Union agreement to prevent domestic violence. Turkey was the first country to sign the convention, and since early July, has been reconsidering its signature reportedly due to concerns about decaying family values, including heterosexuality.
The entire day I received thoughtful notes from friends who wanted to learn more about Turkey and the topic. “I just found out about the roots of this challenge,” one of them texted. “Wow.” But by the time it was 9 p.m., the conversation had shifted: Was this movement even started by Turkish women? No, the data showed, so now that was the story: Turkish women co-opted a movement of posting selfies by talking about femicide in their home country. As a rather privileged Turkish woman in America, I have felt invisible quite a few times. I rarely hear from people who look like me and the shift in the tone of coverage encouraged me to be the voice that I wish I heard more.
We can spend hours talking about how a challenge to post black and white photos emerged, or we can try to use the seemingly superficial reflex of selfie-posting to allow Turkish women, who rarely occupy space in mainstream media, to do so for once.
If there is one thing we can learn in 2020, it is to listen — and it is the least we can do. Instead of negating the experiences of women from Muslim-majority countries especially when their stories don’t serve a U.S.-centric narrative, we can all sit down for a second and read up on histories and realities that we don’t know about. And maybe through that we can understand what’s happening in our homes much better.
Brooklyn, July 2020
