Murder of Özgecan Aslan

With Turkey still in shock after the brutal killing of 20-year-old Özgecan Aslan, news reports of violence against unfortunately continue without stopping.

Turkey?s penalties for violence against women are strict enough for suspects to get the necessary sentences, and the problem is with the prosecution process, during which judges have discretionary power, Family and Social Policies Minister Ay?enur ?slam has said.

With the police and the Family Ministry weighing up steps to take in the fight against violence against women, 125 victims have changed their names to escape further attacks.

How awful! A psychopath stabs to death a 20-year-old female student because she had resisted his rape attempt. He then chops off her hands and burns her, all while ringing his father and a friend who arrive at the scene to ?help? him. The next day, nearly 80 million Turks are shocked! How shocking one of us committed such a monstrous act!

College student Özgecan Aslan?a brutal killing in Mersin once again brought the usual discussion to the surface. Columnists, politicians, experts think and limit the scope of the argument to ?violence against women.? Yet the real picture is far more complicated than the ?men gone mad? cliché.

A mentally ill Turkish man has been detained for allegedly murdering his wife and dumping her dismembered body at a garbage dump in Istanbul -- the latest grisly killing of a woman in Turkey.      
 
The murder came amid public anger over the murder and attempted rape of 20-year-old female student Özgecan Aslan by a bus driver last week.        

A ruling party lawmaker has blamed popular Turkish soap operas for the increase in the number of rape cases in the country, arguing that such series were ruining the nature of the Turkish family structure.

?Men are entrusted to women.?

?It?s not over until I say it is over.?

The first sentence belongs to Turkey?s President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an. He said it while talking about the brutal murder of Özgecan Aslan.

The second belongs to an ordinary male citizen in Turkey, uttered when his female partner asks to part ways.

Özgecan Aslan was murdered brutally because she was a woman.

We are, as a country, experiencing the pain of such an atrocity. At least, today, all of us, especially we, men, should be thinking again and again, questioning our view of women.  The first thing men should do is change the language of politics.

Around 15,000 people marched in the southern province of Mersin on Feb. 18 to protest the brutal murder of 20-year-old Özgecan Aslan.