Friday, November 25, 2016

What happens when they are in power-----Special Bus Service for Women in Post-Coup Istanbul

Special Bus Service for Women in Post-Coup Istanbul:
"Amid a climate of growing violence toward women in Turkey, female passengers on public buses in Istanbul after 10 pm will now be able to exit the bus anywhere on the route, whether there is a bus stop or not.
The measure, instituted to increase the safety of women, addresses the reality that women face in the city of more than 14 million citizens.
Violence against women in Turkey – already at a crisis level – has dramatically increased since the failed coup attempt against Islamist president and AK party (AKP) member Recep Erdogan last July.
“The coup, the war, AKP’s backwardness or jihadist mobs … they all target women,” said the University Women’s Collective in a statement.
Women connected to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) pointed as the “male-dominated, militarist mentality” currently dominating Turkish politics as the cause for the uptick.
Since Erdogan’s Islamist party came to power in Turkey in 2003, violence against women has skyrocketed.
Statistics taken between 2003 and 2010 by the Turkish Ministry of Justice indicate there was a 1,400 percent increase in the number of murders of women, including 300 cases per year where women had asked for a divorce.
By 2009, the minister of justice said that 953 women were murdered that year, and in 2010, the government stopped keeping statistics.  
Journalist Cicek Tahaoglu, who writes for the news outlet Bianet, said that her own finding show that the number of murder rose 31 percent between 2013 and 2014 alone."

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