Dilan Karamanoğlu / JINHA

ISTANBUL – In the wake of a sexist headline attacking a woman politican in Turkey, women journalists say they are at work to fight back against the patriarchal media.

Yesterday, the major Turkish daily newspaper Star ran a story about woman politician Figen Yüksekdağ, the co-leader of the left party HDP, with the headline “shut this hussy up.” Women journalists familiar with the sexism of the media say the article is an attack on all women.
Michelle Demishevich, a reporter for news website T24, traced the sexism in the media to its origins in patriarchal Turkish culture.

“As a result, the language used in media can’t go very far from this tradition,” said Michelle, who has herself been targeted in hate attacks. “Unfortunately, both the language we use in daily life and the language of the media lays the groundwork for this violence, these hate crimes. Since the state, the judiciary and the media are all masculine, when these three come together we see hate crimes occur.”

Whenever women step out of the traditional roles set for them by the state, noted Dicle News Agency journalist Zuhal Atlan, they are attacked with sexist language like that used in Star, a way of legitimizing violence against women. “But as women journalists, we won’t allow this sexist media, and we will continue to expose their sexist language with our pens,” said Zuhal.

Çiçek Tahaoğlu of the news website Bianet said that she was ashamed to call those who wrote and printed the Star article her “colleagues.”

(gc/cm)