Have you heard Özgecan's cry?

Özgecan Aslan was a 20-year-old university student. She was killed in a private bus after an attempted rape in Tarsus, between Mersin and Adana on the southern coast of Turkey. The perpetrators of the monstrous crime disfigured and burned her body. They have all been arrested. Yet the slogan ?Have you heard Özgecan?s cry?? is still echoing across massive protests all over the country. Being a woman in Turkey is not easy. In that regard, we are like India, where a 23-year old physiotherapy intern was gang-raped and killed in a private bus in Southern Delhi. Just like that. I have to confess that we in Turkey have not heard the Özgecan?s cry on time.

A few years ago, I was talking to a Russian in Poti, Georgia. Just out of the blue, the guy shared an observation with me. He had come to Poti from Istanbul by car, he said, which meant that he drove through all of the Black Sea coast of Turkey. ?You know,? he told me, ?I only started seeing women on the streets when I passed the Sarpi border gate and entered Batumi.? He did not see any women along the Turkish coast. ?Why is the visibility of women in Turkey so low?? he asked me. It was an embarrassing question to have to answer, but I knew it was true. When I entered Batumi early that morning, I saw women on the streets, presumably going to work. It turns out that the female labor force participation ratio is around 75 percent in Georgia. The same number is a face-reddening 30 percent in Turkey, the lowest in the OECD. How about India, you may ask? They?re just below 30 percent. Is it a coincidence that women are subjected to terrible crimes in both countries? I wish it were so.

I now consider the visibility of women on the streets as an indicator of how civilized the city is that I am in. Let?s not...