Turkey, the country where woman come after the oxen

This is from Naz?m Hikmet's poem, "Our Women": "And women, our women, with their magnificent sacred hands? our mothers, lovers, wives, who die without ever having lived and whose place at our table comes after our ox?" 

Like all his work, this is an incredible poem, full of correct observations, describing the place of women in the mind of Turkish men. It was written in 1922.

However, facts on the ground are far from poetic.

Here, in Turkey, what we have to go through is the opposite of being poetic. It is vulgar, difficult to talk about, embarrassing and impossible to accept.

Here, the moment we Turkish women step outside the door - God forbid if we have dressed up for an occasion - anyone, anybody on the street with a male genital organ can harass us. That person could be a seller of simits (a Turkish bagel covered with sesame seeds), a construction worker, even a young boy?

You may be on your way to a job interview. A bad word from a bad person on the street wipes away all your self-esteem, your preparedness for the event. I wonder how many men had to go through all this, or planned ahead to avoid such experiences before something very important?

Actually, this is the light side of the story. The brutal side is the murders of Özgecan, Kübra and Hüsne. We do not know the real dimensions of the daily domestic violence going on inside houses. We only hear about these when they are reported to the police. We see extreme forms of misogyny in this country, which seem to be manifestations of a much deeper hate.

There is a sick mentality we have to fight against and try to change. But instead of that, instead of teaching people to be nice, to be kind, to be helpful to each other, the most important women...