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* Note to Eng­lish read­ers: Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the film “Dying to divorce” is avail­able on ARTE only in Turk­ish, French or Ger­man. If you under­stand any of these lan­guages, do watch it. If you don’t, the infor­ma­tion in the arti­cle is use­ful for everyone.

A doc­u­men­tary done over a long peri­od which places the wom­en’s strug­gle in Turkey among the deci­sive polit­i­cal ele­ments of the past 6 years.

The tone of this film, with no easy short-cuts nor stan­dard for­mu­la­ic lan­guage, far removed from any ori­en­tal­ist read­ing, makes it a doc­u­men­tary that is both very human and very polit­i­cal. Some­thing quite rare in films on Turkey, we must say.

Thanks to the young film direc­tor Chloe Fair­weath­er and her team, and praise for the dai­ly fight put up by lawyer Ipek Bozkurt.

Here is the Arte TV Sta­tion’s pre­sent­ing of the film:

The poignant strug­gle of Turk­ish lawyer Ipek Bozkurt against fem­i­ni­cides, as she deals with a jus­tice sys­tem scan­dalous­ly leni­nent toward vio­lent men.

In Turkey, con­ju­gal vio­lences are a sys­temic scourge. As more than one woman out of three is vic­tim­ized – the high­est fig­ure in a devel­oped coun­try – fem­i­ni­cides com­mit­ed by spous­es or ex-spous­es occur by the hun­dred every year, and are only rarely sanc­tioned at the lev­el required for such a crime.

Fem­i­nist lawyer Ipek Bozkurt has tak­en on this cause as her fight: a pro­found­ly polit­i­cal com­mit­ment for jus­tice and fem­i­nine eman­ci­pa­tion, con­trary to the con­ser­vatism incar­nat­ed by Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan. Chloe Fair­weath­er fol­lowed this remark­able woman for sev­er­al years dur­ing her strug­gle for two vic­tims their hus­bands had left with seri­ous hand­i­caps. One of them suf­fered bul­let wounds for hav­ing request­ed a divorce and both of them lost cus­tody of their chil­dren who remained in the fam­i­lies of their aggressors.

Nour­ished by a just indig­na­tion, this deeply mov­ing doc­u­men­tary under­lines how patri­ar­chal tra­di­tions, but also the omnipresent polit­i­cal vio­lence in Turkey trans­form the com­bat for wom­en’s rights and the reform of jus­tice into a tun­nel the end of which is hard to see.

ipek bozkurt avocate turquie

Ipek Bozkurt is a fem­i­nist lawyer prac­tic­ing in Turkey and spe­cial­ized in cas­es of vio­lence against women and feminicides.

With her law diplo­ma, she obtained a Mas­ters in Euro­pean Stud­ies at the Lon­dong School of Eco­nom­ics and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence in 2003. She worked in a local lawyer’s office in Istan­bul for close to ten years until 2014, when she opened her own cab­i­net. Ipek is the coor­di­na­tor for the We Will Stop Femi­cides Plat­form, a fem­i­nist non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion to pro­tect wom­en’s “right to life” and pre­vent sex­ist homi­cides of women in Turkey.

Note: Fol­low­ing the wom­en’s night march on March 8 2021 in Istan­bul, ten peo­ple were arrest­ed after a raid on their homes. They are charged with “insult­ing the President”.

Doc­u­men­tary by Chloe Fair­weath­er (UK, 2020, 1h21mn) Avail­able until 07/06/2021 » On  ARTE in French

Trailer / Dying to divorce

Filmed over five years, “Dying To Divorce” takes view­ers into the heart of Turkey’s gen­der-based vio­lence cri­sis and the recent polit­i­cal events that have severe­ly erod­ed demo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms. Through inti­mate­ly shot per­son­al sto­ries, the film gives a unique per­spec­tive on the strug­gle to be an inde­pen­dent woman in mod­ern Turkey.

More than one in three Turk­ish women have expe­ri­enced domes­tic vio­lence and the num­ber of femi­cides is ris­ing. But some Turk­ish women are fight­ing back. Ipek Bozkurt, a coura­geous lawyer, is deter­mined to chal­lenge this misog­y­nis­tic vio­lence by putting abu­sive men behind bars.

Work­ing with a group of activists, Ipek is fight­ing to get jus­tice for two sur­vivors of hor­rif­ic vio­lence – Arzu, mar­ried off at 14 to a farmer ten years her senior and Kubra, a suc­cess­ful and glam­orous TV pre­sen­ter. From very dif­fer­ent back­grounds, both were lucky to sur­vive the attacks by their partners.

Arzu was mar­ried off at 14 to a farmer ten years her senior. She lost both legs and the use of her arms when her hus­band fired sev­en shot­gun shells into her after she asked for a divorce. She must try to rebuild her life to regain cus­tody of her chil­dren, who have been tak­en into care.

Kubra, a suc­cess­ful and glam­orous TV pre­sen­ter, suf­fered a brain haem­or­rhage after being attacked by her hus­band, two days after giv­ing birth. Her injuries result­ed in the loss of her abil­i­ty to speak and walk. Her hus­band denies attack­ing her and has kept their daugh­ter. Kubra must under­go inten­sive speech ther­a­py in order to tes­ti­fy against him in court. Unless he is con­vict­ed, Kubra may not see her daugh­ter again.

Ipek’s fight is not only against a legal sys­tem which reg­u­lar­ly gives light sen­tences to male per­pe­tra­tors but an increas­ing­ly repres­sive gov­ern­ment whose unprece­dent­ed crack­down on dis­sent­ing voic­es leaves Ipek, like thou­sands of oth­er lawyers, fear­ing imprisonment.
JAVA Films


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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