Hi guys,
A more serious topic this week - the crisis affecting Turkish women.
Some of you may have seen the hashtag #ChallengeAccepted going round on Instagram - accompanied by a black and white selfie of the person whose account it is. While female empowerment will never stop being an important issue, this trend was actually originally intended to raise awareness of the growing violence against women in Turkey as a result of lockdown and other CoVID-19 measures.
Instagram user @beelzeboobz (great username) said "Turkish people wake up every day to see a black and white photo of a woman who has been murdered on their Instagram feed, on their newspapers, on their TV screens.The black and white photo challenge started as a way for women to raise their voice. To stand in solidarity with the women we have lost. To show that one day, it could be their picture that is plastered across news outlets with a black and white filter on top."
While I love the idea, it seems that this message has become somewhat lost in amongst the superficiality of celebrities posting a black-and-white selfie without sharing the information about the growing rates of femicide in Turkey.
If you want to find out more, you can follow the Instagram account @aturkishculturalclub to find out more. If you can, donate to Morcati Vakfi or Small Projects Istanbul, women’s shelters attempting to make a difference.
Thank you for putting light on this. It is important that the message Turkish women trying to give does not get lost in translation and so that the challenge won't lose its meaning. If you are looking for ways to help, please consider donating to Turkish Philanthropy Funds (www.tpfund.org). We are a US based organization working with many organizations in Turkey that are fighting violence against women to change the understanding of the society of “what a woman can or can not do.”
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