Gülşen Koçuk/JINHA

AGIRÎ – 18-year-old N.S. says now it is time: she has taken a step that is terrifying for many women given the patriarchal and anti-woman climate in Turkey by reporting the physical and sexual abuse of her father.

N.S. has lived with her father's sexual harassment for the past 11 years in the province of Ağrı, in the far eastern part of Northern Kurdistan. This is a region of Turkey where the state does little to protect women from male violence and where femicides frequently go unpunished. Although for her own safety N.S. did not want her name used in this story, she has taken a step that is difficult for women anywhere and reported her father's violence.

N.S. has survived 11 years of sexual abuse from her father, starting when she was a small child. He also physically abused her mother. Ten years ago, her mother succeeded in divorcing her father to escape the abuse. After three years of another marriage, her father began living with her mother again, abusing her and now attacking her with a knife.

The man would frequently lock his wife, N.S. and the other children out of the house in the freezing weather of the mountainous province, only letting them in when they were on the point of death.Although she was accepted to university, N.S. did not go because she was afraid that he would direct his sexual abuse at her siblings.

"I knew that if I left my father alone with my siblings he would devastate them," she said. "But we were afraid to tell our mother about it, we were ashamed."

Her father's family and the neighbors knew of the abuse and legitimized it, increasing the sense of desperation.The sexual abuse, says N.S., lasted until December of this year.Finally, N.S. and her mother went to the local women's solidarity center. They are now staying with relatives.

The man has threatened to kill N.S. and her mother. Although after her mother filed charges, her father was imprisoned, N.S. says she knows his attacks could reach her.

"I'm scared I'll be killed when I'm leaving school," she said. "I'm struggling to keep up my education.

"I hate my father," she said.

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