SANLIURFA (DIHA)- Last month, 23 young women attempted to suicide in Urfa, after struggling with systematic discrimination and violence in their households and communities. Over the last five days, seven suicide attempts swept through the city.

Due to outdated customs and tradition, as well as the conflicts, desperate women in the south and east of Turkey resort to suicide. All of them are young, aged 15 to 25 years old.

Şanlıurfa’s Women Platform spokesperson, Zeliha Açıkyıldız, blamed the conflict and its subsequent traumatization for locals. Furthermore, the state typically protects men’s dominance in cases of suicide, domestic violence and murder, says Sevahir Bayındır, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy.

Batman has the highest suicide rate in early 2000 and 30 women committed suicide in five months in 2000 and noted the history as the highest suicide rate. Regarding these figures, women in Şanlıurfa are running toward to death.

They typically used pills for committing suicide.

In addition to the political conflict, unemployment is yet another reason which may trigger domestic violence, added Açıkyıldız: “Women shelters and protective laws are not enough. There is no opportunity for women to work or fight for their rights in this region.

We need to solve the problem which is not so different from the Kurdish problem. In fact, they are related to each other. Security and opportunities for women are the first remedies to prevent women’s suicides.”
Psychiatrist Abidin Balkan explains: “The first reason for committing suicide for women is due to being a victim of incest. The second one is due to being a victim of traditions.

A girl is a sexual object when she is 12 or 13 years old, according to the understanding of the region’s people. Therefore, the incest rate is very high. The real numbers of suicide are probably even higher. Many women who appear to have committed suicide were pressured by their relatives. This reality has been known for decades by authorities but no one clamps down.”
Deputy Sevahir Bayındır spoke out: “Even we are facing problems as women deputies in the Assembly. We have had many official questions brought to the assembly but none of them were discussed. As women, we all are facing discrimination in Turkey’s societies. In the rural areas, this oppression has never disappeared.

A man in Turkey seems to be the owner of women. He is the owner of a woman’s rights like how long she can speak or her dressing style, going out, working for money, seeing her family or anyone around her family, educating herself and this list can go on forever. For highly aggrieved women, committing suicide remains as the only way to get rid of these conditions.”

(gü/bk)