SARYA DENİZ

Istanbul – Turkey hasn’t observed the Daylight Saving time change for six years in order to “save money”. Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources has announced that the street lights will be turned on 15 minutes late and turned off 30 minutes earlier. This decision risks the lives of women and children living in especially west of the country. Women and children, who have to go to work and school before sunrise, are left unprotected in dark streets.

Fireflies

The "Fireflies – Light the Dark" campaign was launched by UN Women in Turkey in 2019 as part of the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence campaign. Every year, the campaign focuses on different forms of violence to raise awareness. This year, the campaign calls everyone to join the solidarity movement and say “I am raising my voice” at www.fireflies.digital. The website includes the following statement:

“Each recorded sound will increase the distance between women and violence through an increase in audio frequency. Visitors will be able to download their voice recordings and invite their friends to the solidarity. The campaign will inform about possible individual interventions that can be taken in the incidents of violence in different settings such as at home, among a group of friends, on social media, at work, or at a sports club. The visitor will listen to the scenarios and learn possible interventions and how to take action against any act of violence.”

Women are unprotected in dark

The "Fireflies – Light the Dark" campaign reveals how remaining in the dark causes fear among women. The recorded sounds also reveal that women are subjected to verbal and physical abuse in almost every part of Turkey and that women don’t feel safe in public spaces.

Map of violence against women

In 2019, UN Women Turkey asked people across the country to pin a firefly on the interactive map to mark the places where they felt unsafe. During the 16-day campaign period, the interactive map received over 14,500 firefly pinnings. The top five concerns highlighted were: Insufficient lighting – dark streets/alleys/neighborhoods/park, verbal and physical harassment, unsafe and desolate areas, being followed, and physical violence and narrow streets and alleys. Istanbul, Ankara, and İzmir were pinned as the most unsafe provinces.

Turkey ranked 106^th out of 170 countries, according to the Women, Peace and Security Index of 2021. Especially during the pandemic, security has become a crisis for women in Turkey.

Women are subjected to attacks in the streets

251 women were killed in Turkey as of November 15, 2021, according to the figures shared by the Turkish Ministry of Interior. 277 women were killed by men between November 2020 and October 2021 in Turkey, according to the data compiled from news outlets. Recently, a young woman named Başak Cengiz was killed in the street just for being a woman. “I just wanted to kill a woman,” the killer said in his statement at the police station. Then, a man named Emrah Yılmaz attacked two women with a knife. A woman named Hatice Türkoğlu was subjected to attack by a man while going home. Many women are subjected to attacks in the streets of Turkey every day.

Women need safe cities

Women need light and safe cities rather than dark cities. They need light spaces, mechanisms to apply immediately when they are subjected to violence or harassment. That’s why women living in Turkey have been saying, “Streets are ours” for years. Women need safe spaces not to "save money"