Another way of showing hostility toward women

Women themselves say that women's rights in our country have been steadily declining in recent years, and practices and statistics prove this as well. 

However, there is another issue that negatively affects women, which Istanbul Bar Association President Filiz Saraç has announced and which the Istanbul Bar Association has been persistently emphasizing.

As is known, violence against women and family disputes are at an extreme level in Turkey, and a woman falls victim to murder almost every day in the country. And it is essential that women are legally supported in this struggle against men, because, in most cases, women do not even have the money to hire a lawyer. 

Bar associations provide for this need of women through the legal aid fund.

In other words, if a woman cannot afford to hire a lawyer, she goes to the bar association, the bar association provides her with a lawyer, and the attorney's fee is covered by the state from the legal aid fund.

According to President Filiz Saraç, 8 thousand 550 lawyers serve within the legal aid system at the Istanbul Bar Association. As of November 2023, the number of applications made to these lawyers is 6 thousand 905. Interestingly, 6 thousand 172 of these applications, meaning 90 percent of the total applications, came from women. Therefore, the legal aid fund is a practice that benefits women at a rate of 90 percent.

Lawyers who support women are supposed to be paid from the ministry's budget according to the minimum fee schedule. And lawyers work tooth and nail to defend women. 

However, the ministry has not been paying the lawyers working in legal aid for two years. 

For this purpose, the Istanbul Bar Association wrote to the Ministry of Justice and political parties, stating that the amount that needs to be paid to lawyers within the scope of legal aid has reached 34 million TL, but that payments are two years behind. According to the bar association's statement, payments are currently being made for those whose documents were submitted in May-June 2022. (34 million lira is practically pocket change compared to the 1.5 billion paid for the astronaut sent to space.)

We all know how high inflation is in the country. Just think, if a lawyer receives their modest attorney's fee, which should have been paid to them according to the minimum tariff 22 months ago, after this much time has passed, what is left in their hands? 

Nothing.

Knowing this, they still do not pay the lawyers' fees. 

When this happens, the practice loses its appeal. That is why Bar Association President Filiz Saraç says, “The government does not allocate a budget for access to justice in cases of violence against women, and it makes the legal services that our colleagues carry out with devotion impossible to perform.”

Is she wrong?

Of course not.

Well, is disrupting a practice that benefits women at a rate of 90 percent not hostility toward women?

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One more note should be added on this subject.

The government had passed a law aimed at distributing the legal aid fund almost equally in provinces with more than one bar association, rather than according to the number of lawyers; the purpose of this was to feed the bar associations they had established themselves. But we know that the regulation made to establish pro-government bar associations did not work, the phenomenon of a second bar association did not emerge, and even lawyers who support the government did not show interest in those bar associations. In fact, the Constitutional Court determined that the law was contrary to the principle of equality and canceled it, requesting a new regulation. The government is not making this regulation either; on the contrary, it is looking for ways to close the Constitutional Court. It seems that such decisions even have an impact on the intention to close the Constitutional Court.

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In the meantime, let us not be unfair; apart from the money-grubbers, thousands of lawyers continue to support women, back those in need, and defend the defenseless, even if they cannot get paid.

Because they are aware that the real goal of those who delay their payments is to leave women defenseless, make them dependent on men, confine them to the home, and isolate them from society if possible.

And a female lawyer expresses this as follows:

“If we do not provide support to defenseless women in the judiciary, we are playing into the hands of those who want to Talibanize the country; we are aware of this.”