Title of Project: Domestic Violence in Turkey and The Image of Women in Turkish Media
Inspiration Behind the Project:We all see women exposed to violence on TV or on newspapers that we enjoy reading with a cup of tea or coffee every day. And when we see such news, we all feel terrified, disgusted and sorry for those women, don’t we? Being on the rise, it was high time to highlight the importance of domestic violence against women in Turkey both by writing and making a short movie. For that reason, this project aims to point out the issue of domestic violence against women in Turkey. This project is expected to be reviewed by people from all walks of life ranging from lawyers, doctors, engineers to housewives and aims to draw more attention to the issue of domestic violence, how media deals with this issue and the negative impacts it has on women.
The movie is composed of two main sections. The introduction part focuses on identifying the problem and explaining the issue at hand. Various news from Turkish newspapers are shown at the beginning. The voice over helps to understand the issue better by explaining it more elaborately. The movie also contains interviews with a relative of one woman exposed domestic violence, one young woman exposed to violence and a woman experiencing her mother being exposed to violence as a kid. The women interviewed stress the significance of the problem by stating what they went through. In the second part of the movie, a columnist in Hoffingpost, the president of the women and democracy association and a professor teaching in Marmara university, one of the best universities in Turkey, gives ideas about domestic violence in Turkey, discusses reasons and consequences of domestic violence. The movie ends with questions such as what are the reasons of domestic violence, what are the solutions for domestic violence in Turkey and what is the role of Turkish media on domestic violence. These questions are answered by scholars.