Hikmet Tunç/JINHA

WAN – This story is about Şükran Batı’s struggle against male-state violence. Şükran had been forcibly displaced by the state and she had been forced to marry when she was a child. She has begun to protect her culture and gender identity since she noticed the impression from two parts.

Şükran Batı had been forcibly displaced with her family from the Sümer village of Mardin’s Midyat village in 1990s due to the state policy of displacement. When she was 14-year-old, her father told her, ‘You are a girl, you cannot go school anymore’.

Şükran said, “They have considered that we are less important than men. Our society behaves us as if the God gives only the sin and shame to the girls.” She had been forced to marry when she was 14-year-old, “While I could take the responsibility of marriage, I became a mother one year later. How a child looks after a child?” asked Şükran.


Şükran noted that they had been forcibly displaced from Mardin to Istanbul in 1992; “We have been subjected many torture just because we are Kurdish. The state told us, ‘you should take weapons as village guard or you have to leave your lands.’All family had to go to Istanbul against the impositions. We didn’t know Turkish, when people asked ‘where did you come from’, and told them, ‘We came from Mardin’. When they heard that they told us, ‘dirty terrorists’. My parents could get used to live in big city, so they returned to Mardin. I stayed in Istanbul with the man I married. He worked at night so I stayed at home alone with my child.”

Şükran stated that she became a mother when she was a child, “It was a very weird feeling. For example, someday my child began to cry. I didn’t know why she cried. I couldn’t do anything and took her to hospital. The doctor said, ‘this child is starving’. She was hungry that’s why she cried and I didn’t know that.”

Şükran noted that they lived in Mardin with many people from different race, “There are many different cultures and race particularly in Midyat. There wasn’t racism when we were child. Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians and Turks lived together. We didn’t understand each other’s language when we were child, but there isn’t any language in games. We played together.”

Şükran underlined that she never bow down against male mentality and the state domination. She said, “I never bow down against the male mentality and the state domination. I have protected my language and culture. I taught my children their culture and language, too. I stand up for my identity and women’s power.”

(dc/fk/gd)