Woman killed for resisting rape, Turkey fumes

Thousands of women’s rights activists have taken to the streets in cities across Turkey after a woman was allegedly killed for resisting an attempt to rape her. The burnt body of Ozgecan Aslan, 20, was found in a riverbed in the city of Mersin in the south of the country on Friday. Police have arrested three men in connection with the death: a minibus driver, his father, and a friend.
Officers believe the driver allegedly tried to rape Aslan, who fought back with pepper spray but was then stabbed to death and beaten around the head with an iron pipe. She had been missing since Wednesday when she was reported to have boarded a minibus to go home, the Hurriyet reported. The murder has caused an outcry across Turkey and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has telephoned the woman’s family to offer his condolences.
Protests took place in the country’s capital Ankara, its largest city Istanbul, and Mersin itself. Banners read “Enough, we will stop the murder of women!” Other demonstrators carried pictures of Aslan, whilst some danced in protest. The majority of the demonstrators were themselves women.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition CHP party, wrote on Twitter: “There is no harassment, rape, violence in the nature of women! We will all together say ‘no’ to this mentality!”
The crime appears set to become a rallying cause for activists seeking to end violence against women in a country where hundreds of women are killed by their husbands every year.
In November, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stirred controversy when he declared that women were not equal to men. Erdogan has also drawn the ire of feminist groups for declaring that every woman in Turkey should have three children and with proposals to limit abortion rights and the morning-after pill.