Turkey vows action after outcry over female student’s murder

Turkey’s leaders on Monday vowed to take action over the “open wound” of violence against women, after the murder and attempted rape of a 20-year-old female student by a bus driver unleashed a wave of public anger. The killing of Ozgecan Aslan, 20, has become a rallying cause for activists campaigning to end the country’s endemic levels of violence against women in Turkey, with thousands taking to the streets to protest over the weekend. Several top officials even suggested discussions on restoring the death penalty for the suspected perpetrator and his two accomplices, who have all been arrested. Turkey in 2004 abolished the death penalty, a key requisite for its membership of the European Union.

I will personally follow the case so that they will be given the heaviest penalty. I am already following the case. Violence against women is the bleeding wound of our country.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish President

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a devout Sunni in the patriarchal Muslim majority nation, has in the past been criticised by women’s groups for failing to speak out more domestic violence and for saying he does not believe in equality of the sexes, said the guilty deserved “the most severe punishment”. His two daughters, Sumeyye Erdogan and Esra Albayrak, earlier paid a joint visit to the grieving family of the victim at her home in southern Turkey. There was outrage on social media against singer Nihat Dogan for a comment on Twitter about “girls wearing miniskirts and getting naked”. Amid an outcry, he was thrown out of the Turkish edition of the game show “Survivor”.

sendeanlat Middle East