Turkey: the #MeeToo of Turkish lawyers

Audio 02:34

By: Anne Andlauer

In February, a young lawyer from Istanbul denounced the sexual assault suffered by a colleague on the Twitter social network. Her anonymous message was shared thousands of times, prompting justice to act and freeing the voices of many other lawyers. Since then, some of them have organized themselves, in line with the #MeToo movement, so that all kinds of violence against women in the Turkish judiciary finally comes to light.

Publicity

“  Hello, my name is Öykü. Let me tell you how a lawyer at the Istanbul bar engaged in sexual assault on me and many others ...  ”Thus begins the story of Öykü, a Turkish student lawyer, published on Twitter on 16 February.

A long message in which the young woman details the ordeal that made her undergo a man, tenor of the Istanbul bar, with whom she was doing an internship. Öykü recounts the harassment, the assault, then the threats to silence her, the fear of filing a complaint, and the colleagues who confided in her that she had endured the same thing.

She ends her message with a call for help, and a call to testify, under the hashtag # ÖykülerinSesiOl - word for word: "  Be the voice of the (other) Öyküs  ".

Öykü has been heard. His alleged attacker is in prison awaiting trial. Thousands of women shared his message on Twitter, including lawyers who in turn denounce assaults or discrimination.

Recently, around 30 of them demonstrated outside the Istanbul courthouse. Short hair, Fulya Dagli has been advocating for a year. She denounces a system that pushes victims to remain silent:
“  A barricade stands in front of those who want to fight and publicly denounce this violence. Because the attacker is famous, he threatens to let us not work anywhere, because he claims that there is no evidence ... These threats push many of us into silence.  "

Faced with the silent victims, Diren Cevahir Sen, a lawyer for nine years, points to the culprits that we protect, and who protect themselves, between men - including within bars:

“  Judges, prosecutors, bailiffs, fellow lawyers harass us… and the bars do absolutely nothing. We demand that training on social equality between men and women be made compulsory in the training of lawyers. And even feminism classes !  "

So to be heard, these lawyers organize themselves on social networks. Over a thousand of them signed a petition denouncing the violence of their male colleagues and demanding state and bar action.

For Fulya Dagli, there is no doubt: her profession is experiencing a #MeToo moment, named after this global social movement promoting the voice of women:

“  Since the affair, as soon as we meet in the corridors of the bar or elsewhere, this is our first subject of discussion. It is a first step : one of us had the courage to speak and transmitted this courage to us. Because courage is contagious, and we think that from now on, our struggle will advance and will spread very quickly in society.  "

But there is a long way to go: the Batman bar in eastern Turkey has launched an internal investigation against 25 lawyers who had denounced some of their colleagues to the press. They took photos under their sisters' dresses and shared them on a WhatsApp group.

Newsletter Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

Follow all international news by downloading the RFI application

• Turkey
• Womens rights

On the same subject

Turkey

Turkey: mobilization against domestic violence in Istanbul

Turkey / Women's rights

Turkey: Trial of iconic feminicide begins

Turkey

Turkey: violent crackdown on women's demonstration