Our nation's strongest social institutions are religion, custom, and family. These three institutions will have the most significant impact on all types of societal issues, including violence. We do not consider the Istanbul Convention to be a suitable political text since it lacks these elements. It is a demolition project with its traumas, paradigmatic and ideological handicaps, and the model it imposes as Gender Equality.
Istanbul Convention is a Missed Global Operation at Fight With Our National and Religious Acouis
The Istanbul Convention, which has been the subject of discussion in all segments of society for a long time, has become one of the most controversial texts among the international agreements that our country has accepted. I'd wanted to look into why this contract was discussed so extensively in terms of form and substance for a long time. First and foremost, it is necessary to give some background information about what the Istanbul Convention is and for what purpose it was adopted.
The Formation Process of the Istanbul Convention
The Istanbul Convention was signed by Dr Ahmet Davutolu, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, on May 11, 2011. It was signed by the Council of Ministers on 11.11.2011 and became legal after the required processes and obligations were completed. The text was prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and transferred to the Turkish Grand National Assembly as a binding text. Because of the text's social dimensions, we assume that it has been thoroughly examined by relevant ministries, expert committees, and social structures and non-governmental organizations. However, it seems that if the text, which is so intensely opposed today, had received a strong enough social consensus that day and had passed a common filter by different segments of the society, it would not have been so controversial today. Apparently, The text signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and referred to as any international text appears to have failed to pass the compatibility filter by the parties. However, at the stage of signing a text prepared by international institutions, foreseeing such enormous implications, it was envisaged that its global effects would be filtered by intensive negotiation.
However, since it was signed without sufficient effort, it appears to have been the basis of legal texts and policies. On the other hand, countries have the right to open a discussion and express their opinions about the texts that will be signed by their specialized organizations. The fact that the convention exists based on a reasonable and justified fact, such as Violence against Women, which is a very human and global problem, does not seem to trigger the motive of questioning what kind of handicaps there are between the lines of the convention contract. Thus, the lines between sentences that draw attention and impose a new modern paradigm are skipped. The text discussed today is not the fight against Violence against Women, but the problematic concepts, facts, emphasis, and hidden goals that exist between these lines. This article will discuss these concepts and phenomena and make accountancy for the nine years. While its legal and administrative dimensions are reserved, sociological, cultural, and psychosocial effects will be discussed.
All Violence Against Women Is Opposition to Divine Order
Violence is one of the structural and universal problems of human beings. The first curse of humanity is the persecution of Abel, the perpetrator of the first act of violence. While Allah and humans curse all forms of violence, especially violence that transcends the ages, is particularly troubling. Eve is the first human mother, and she was made as Prophet Adam's friend and partner (peace be upon Him). Humanity has expanded to many parts of the globe as a result of the children he has produced. Humankind drowned in the oppression it created when it rebelled against the stuck pledge in time and spawned extremism in every field. Through his Prophets, Allah rescued humanity from the abyss of sin and cruelty. As a result, every Prophet's first and most crucial piece of advice to his ummah was to refrain from cruelty and violence. Violence against women as a form of cruelty and violence, and persecution as one of the excesses of human beings, has always been forbidden by Allah through his Prophets. The murder of girls and their humiliation, enslavement, annihilation, and violence were the most visible ignorance practices of the society of ignorance from which the Prophet emerged. Thus, the murder of girls and violence against women were among the first oppressions and sins that the Messenger of Allah brought under his feet. Therefore, every divine commandment condemns and prohibits aggression against women.
The treatment of women is a barometer of a society's disruption
The abuse and oppression of women in social life is a reflection of every disrupted order in the universe. Women are commodified and abused in any society that loses control. This trauma does not have to be the same in every culture. Women are abused in different ways in different parts of the world nowadays. They are abused from the East to the West, from the South to the North. While the commodified woman is used as a toy of lust and vulgarized as a sexual commodity in the countries in the center of capitalism, the number of women raped in the Western World during the World Wars had reached millions. Rape is a method used by the West as a tool of war in the countries it occupies. After the World Wars, the legal and conscientious formation of a global organization and contractual institutions would not have sufficed. Rape, persecution, and killings of women in Bosnia were employed as a war instrument by the Serbian Chetniks in the first war that emerged in the West, and the powers supported them. Pornography, as a filthy capitalist sectoral field, is now a form of violence against women in the Western world and its colonial regions. Child sexuality and similar perversions are a state of miserable violence against women that has spread as a free situation in Western societies as the intolerable perverted states of this work.
Cruelty and Violence Against Women is a War Against Allah's Order
'Every society that abuses women is void.'
The abuse of ignorance and moral principles has limited the role of women in Eastern societies, and the woman who withdraws from the diversity of social participation and production has become a source of domestic and extra-familial violence. As a result, no conventional explanation for violence against women can be offered. As a dignified interlocutor of the Qur'an and Islam, a woman cannot be a slave to male-dominated oppression because she is the addressee of Allah. Making the woman, Allah's addressee, a second-class subject or a victim of violence is an intolerable scenario. Any society that deviates from the path of hikmah and irfan is ignorant. Every ignorant civilization produces errors and commits sins. Hikmah and the Qur'an are the sole criteria that can save them from these sins. Every corrupted society today is corrupted because it has cut its ties with God and is acting contrary to divine law. Every measure put in its place will be incomplete and void. Any order that excludes women from social life, renders them unqualified, excludes them from education and participation, and makes them the target of assault and abuse is invalid.
The Situation in Our Country….
It is undeniable that our country has been experiencing a family crisis, particularly among women, for a while due to the functional abuse of the family and the consequences of social disintegration. It is well recognized that, in addition to the global women's crisis that we have discussed, a male-dominated language has become prevalent, and violence against women has escalated. The problem that women have, which is in spiral order, is actually a man's problem. For a while, society and social structures made up of men and women have been in crisis. With the abandonment of religion, custom, and wisdom, or the imposition of custom that has lost its wisdom, a serious crisis has developed. It is significant to mention that the educational culture, which is at odds with tradition and religion, has influenced the creation of this process as well. The structure of National Education, which is positioned in a secular manner according to customary and religious fields, particularly for ideological purposes, presents an image that is at contrast with social values has also led to our country's women forsaking education. The headscarf issue, restrictions on Imam Hatip Schools, inability to integrate religious and academic education, and the regime's distance from religious education prevented our women from receiving education, and our country's women were unable to reach their full potential. The decline in the quality of our women's representation, who lacked sufficient knowledge and academic education, had a negative impact on their entire lives. The failure to combine irfani, religious, academic, and customary education, which is the fundamental emphasis of education and development, has thrown us into a deep vortex. Tawhidi Tedrisat was unable to bring the intellectual and academic worlds together. The problem of poor-quality men and women is today's most significant outcome of this process. With this dimension, we are dealing with a human problem rather than a problem of violence against women and women in our society. We obviously have local issues in addition to the global crisis. The fight against this problem, which has been brewing for quite some time, should be a national one. The Istanbul Convention has practically fallen into our laps with the effect of a global wind when we need a struggle with local dynamics, participation, and multiple dimensions.
Istanbul Convention 'A Text that Divides, Separates and Splits'
The Istanbul Convention appears to be a text on violence against women as a structural problem in the country. It was presented to our country's institutions and policymakers as a finished text on women which is signed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the effect of the issues we are experiencing and worldwide propaganda. With the debates surrounding it and the gaps between sentences and the dimensions that we are not ready for and cannot tolerate as a society, it is apparent that it is a troublesome text. The text is a text that deals with concepts and phenomena that are in close relationship with each other by breaking down, dividing, separating, and breaking apart, as well as asserting that it leads to a solution, despite ignoring the customary, social and ontological harmony. The Istanbul Convention is an international convention with 81 articles. The text was prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, signed by the Council of Ministers' decision, and turned into a national framework text. A multidimensional conceptual space for Violence against Women includes definition and policy, and operational processes. The text is an ideological, cultural, legal paradigm text. It's a text written according to Western social codes and imposed in an imperious manner. This is evident from the concepts used.
Our main criticisms of the Istanbul Convention are as follows.
The Convention has been signed as an international text by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There is no indication whether a contribution to the text has been made or whether an annotation has been added throughout this process. As a foreign-sourced text, an imposed or insufficiently studied text image of the text should be discussed at the production stage and brought into compliance with acceptable national and universal criteria.
The text contains cultural codes from the West. It is deftly put inside a non-controversial subject theme, Violence Against Women. Family, unity, custom, and family responsibilities, all of which have lost their value in the West, have been overlooked. In the conceptualization of Violence against Women, men are made the absolute criminal. The approach to the source and solution of violence is not holistic. The multifaceted approach, which deals with men and women, has been abandoned.
The family was overlooked while dealing with the issue of violence against women, and language glorifying the family was not preferred, and women were alienated. The human story of Capitalism and its ideological twin, Socialism, in the Western world, has a highly criminal appearance. Women have been the most vulnerable victims of the capitalist production cycle. Due to the struggle for equal pay for equal work, Western women, who were employed unregulated and unrestricted in British and French factories, created feminism as an ideological discourse. No matter how much the solution was discovered in the revolution, the slave women of the rising bourgeois class in the factory and life were flung to a more tragic end as laborers in collective farms and communes. In this way, the mental base and psychoanalysis of Western societies that wrote this text are problematic. The suggestions of the western approach on women, which perceives the entire world as itself, are troublesome. Western philosophy, which has undergone a secular and profane transformation, looks at human beings in a secular form with all its dimensions and is unconcerned about any scientific or religious institution or structure. In this text, a common language emerges in which conventional and religious areas are constantly disrupted.
It is important not to overlook the fact that this text has a purposeful global dimension. So far, our efforts have been focused on inadvertent textual errors. The fact that the text uses the guise of violence against women to undermine the relationship between men and women in all religious countries, especially in our country, should also be kept aside.
When the signatory countries are scrutinized, it will be noticed that some of the EU Council's signatures are missing. Why haven't all EU countries signed this document, especially some that stand out with their religiosity (the Vatican, Slavic churches, etc.)?
It is clear that the text addresses the issue of violence against women in a limited manner. Filling in some of the statements that were signed conceptually does not appear to be easy. Extramarital partnership, a previously unknown concept that contradicts our laws, religion, and customs, has been legalized and incorporated into national legislation.
Nature (fıtrat), which is included in the text and has a comprehensive connotation, has legalized the concept of 'Gender Equality,' which pushes the limits of creation and humanity. The new political and social practices that have sprung up around this concept, in particular, are already causing serious problems. With this concept, an approach that legitimizes gender identity stemming from creation and disposition, as well as third sexual preference and gender identity deviations, has become legal.
Gender is divided into two categories in certain circles. The biological sex (sex) that we are born with and the gender that we acquire afterward, according to them. Gender refers to the gender acquired afterward. The reasons for men's and women's roles and behaviors are not innate. Radical feminists take the position that human gender identity is not influenced by or determined by forms of creation and disposition. For this reason, behaviors associated with femininity and masculinity can be reconstructed and altered. Women might be assigned traditional masculine roles, while men can be assigned feminine roles, according to one approach. This approach is briefly defined as 'Gender Equality'.
Discrimination is the most common reason used by structures that adopt the Gender Equality approach. When the term of discrimination is used, however, the religious and customary contexts are made hostile, and the discriminatory dynamics caused by modern capitalist life are ignored. The roles and divine measures arising from the characteristics of nature and creation are presented as the source of discrimination. The rebellion and objections of women based on discrimination are skillfully directed towards the spiritual and divine realm. The female mind is encouraged to rebel through discrimination, a situation that feminism skillfully camouflages. The global historical adventure towards this discrimination is never brought up. The anarchist form from the sixties, such as unlimited freedom, is once again imposed on human life. The Violence Against Women phenomena hides a singular life form and an infinite freedom scale, aimed at humanity's universal innate journey. This is a materialist attack on man's physical and spiritual integrity, resulting in a state of anomie and rulelessness.
'Gender Equality' discourse has gained a legal dimension with the text of the Istanbul Convention. The entire production and consumption cycle and the advertising industry have faced intense propaganda through this approach. All the roles shared in the integrity of life were discussed, and even the possibility of a man giving birth to a child was the subject of research. A mind-boggling competition is raging to prove that women can accomplish whatever males can. Our women are wasted in this meaningless competition, and our youth, who are going through a serious identity crisis, are thrown into deep chaos by the opposing sex's animosity.
Another controversy sparked by the subject of Gender Equality is the rise in the number of people suffering gender identity issues, as well as the innocence of homosexual typology as a result of this discussion. The boldness of our President of Religious Affairs to open up for discussion is legally permitted by the Istanbul Convention, as he recently presented the approach of the divine book on this issue. The notion of Gender Equality in the Istanbul Convention is skillfully incorporated into this text. As a concept that poisons the entire text, it is, unfortunately, a very legitimate concept today.
Religion, according to proponents of the Gender Equality notion, is the primary source of discrimination. Religion and Divine books define women's and men's roles, responsibilities, and limitations, and are the principal source of discrimination in this aspect. The Istanbul Convention, which makes categorical classifications on Violence against Women, considers religion, which was declared an enemy by Gender Equality, and the field of wisdom as the cause of Violence against Women. Where there is Gender Equality conceptualization, it is not possible to have religion and lore at the same time.
One of the institutions that Gender Equality is at odds with is the family. Because, according to them, the family is a patriarchal institution that ensures the continuation of the male-dominated culture. The family, which consists of men and women's physical and social roles, nourishes the roles of femininity and masculinity and grants new roles. Here, the conflicting nature of Socialism and Capitalism with the family should be remembered. The family is a structure in which all divine books and religions see the natural order of man and the continuation of his harmonious and moderate life. Because of these characteristics, the Gender Equality approach views the family as the structural source of violence. In its suggestions and models for ending violence, the Istanbul Convention does not regard the family as a solution point.
One of the most controversial areas of the Istanbul Convention is that it imposes an approach that excludes men and sees the complete source of violence. Violence against women can be perpetrated by both men and women. Violence should be considered as a holistic phenomenon. The approach that excludes men and treats them as potential criminals will be the source of new crises rather than solutions. One point to remember is that violence is a consequence. Eliminating violence will only be possible by eliminating the processes and elements that create violence. Approaches and practices that consider men as a potential source of violence will not yield results. The legal practices and social policy practices that we have created in our country today stigmatize men by seeing them as a potential source of violence. The approach that does not consider security interventions and social policy practices together in deterministic integrity and sees men as a potential source of violence does not yield results and changes the form of violence.
Instead of a conclusion....
In our country, the local causes of all kinds of problems should be investigated with integrity. The religious, customary, and legal resources and opportunities available to us should be used in a synergistic manner. Our nation's most important social institutions are religion, customs, and family. These three institutions will have the greatest impact on all types of societal issues, including violence. We do not consider the Istanbul Convention to be an acceptable political text since it lacks these elements. It is a demolition project, complete with traumas, paradigmatic and ideological handicaps, and the Gender Equality model it imposes.