Language is never stagnant; it is a living organism. Isn't it high time we updated it to fit the needs of the 21st-century human, especially when it comes to matters of gender?
On the occasion of International Women’s Day March 8, many Turkish brands and communities have decided to use their reach for the greater good and draw attention to gender-based discrimination.
Turkish retail giant Boyner Group has led the way in sparking conversations this year. The retailer's social media campaign video opens in a rather innocuous way, with a classically irritating salesperson voice announcing sales for Women’s Day. In a complete 180, instead of listing all the offers on clothes and beauty products, the video goes on to list all the "discounts" given to the male perpetrators of domestic violence and sexual abuse against women in Turkish courts. Judges have granted, reduced or suspended sentences on grounds that the perpetrator "wore a tie" and committed the act to "save his (family’s) honor," among many other bogus excuses, which have gone down in history as appalling and despicable.
Another befitting collaboration has been between the "Turkish Dictionary" and Watsons Turkey, a branch of the Asian health and beauty retailer, on Clubhouse, where they discussed sexist phrases and idioms in Turkish.
The Turkish dictionary, which is the lovechild of Aras Kocaoğlan and Betina Frantz, has swiftly earned Turks’, expats’ and foreigners’ trust and likes with its mostly amusing yet at times thought-provoking posts, daily lexical trivia and cultural tidbits. The platform has in the past covered interesting topics such as the longest word in Turkish (it’s 70 letters) and iconic Turkish pop songs such as Mustafa Sandal’s "Araba" ("Car"), the lyrics of which are etched in the brains of '90s kids.
Even though Turkish is not a gendered language that annotates genders to inanimate objects, it, unfortunately, contains many expressions and words that derogate and patronize women. Here are a few examples: