Gender-Based Violence as a Form of Discrimination: Reconsidering Violence against Women in Turkey

Abstract:

Gender-based violence is a form of violence directed against an individual because s/he does not fit in socially defined roles of femininity or masculinity. It occurs as a result of power relationships and targets disadvantaged groups in the social hierarchy. The gender regimes are constructed through social institutions according to the socioeconomic, cultural, and political needs of societies. Gender inequalities or hierarchies are also constructed within the given socioeconomic, cultural, and political structures. Therefore, the inequalities are neither “natural” nor biologically given. These are socially constructed. Being a form of discrimination and human rights violation, gender-based violence can target women, men, and gender nonbinary individuals as a result of socially constructed roles of femininity and masculinity. However, this chapter will focus mainly on gender-based violence against women, which costs hundreds of women’s lives each year in Turkey.

As an essential tool of patriarchy, male violence against women functions as a control mechanism over women. This violence is an indicator of gender inequalities, and it consists of “all acts of gender-based violence that result in or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, psychological or economic harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life” (Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence—aka Istanbul Convention—Article 3). Violence against women is present in all spheres of life despite sufficient normative juridical framework both at the national and international level to prevent violence against women.

This chapter attempts to reveal how the general and discriminatory judicial passivity and the passive discrimination increase the gender-based violence against women in Turkey; even the laws are well designed to end violence against women. In this chapter, the structural and political inequalities as instruments to reconsolidate the patriarchy via a number of concrete examples that occurred in the 2010s will be discussed, and the deficiency of the state in addressing gender-based violence against women will be examined through feminist jurisprudence in the context of Turkey .