Cedaw Civil Society Forum Individual Disarmament and Womens Role
April 20, 2003
Grand Ankara Hotel
Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
Speech Text
Dear guests and esteemed participants,
Today I am quite happy for being among you and for declaiming you. I followed your activities with interest and admiration. I am sure that we will carry hand to hand our women to the position that they have to be in our society and the world.
We founded Umut Foundation to raise our young people as individuals, who are clear of violence, believe in the rule of law, and who can solve disagreements through peaceful ways while bearing these responsibilities. And, we started the No to Individual Armament initiative within such a framework.
Unfortunately, our children open their eyes to a society over which violence has dominance. Violence is applied for the rehabilitation of the children in families. They grow up in schools believing that violence brings solution and they, themselves, start applying violence in their late ages.
Our goal is to eliminate guns, which are the peak instrument of applying violence and violating human rights, from our daily life. This is possible only through deliberate individual disarmament. Womens contribution to this initiative will be big, because in our society mostly men are armed and unfortunately, women and children live in the shadow and under the pressure of these guns.
In our country, the individual disarmament concept and the damage it gives to the society is not well known. Therefore, it is beneficial to make the definition of individual armament in the first place.
Individual Armament is defined as individuals living within the same society being equipped with firearms, knives and other tools, without belonging to any ideology. No organization is in question in individual armament. Again, armament of states against each other or for defense purposes is not deemed within the scope of individual armament.
Fight against individual armament is at least as important as the fight against armament. Damages given by these two different concepts to the mankind are actually equal. While it has been reported that the number of people who lost their lives in wars in 2001 was 300,000, 200,000 people were killed in the same year in communities in which peace is believed to prevail, as a result of murders committed with firearms, accidents and suicides that took place.
In these days in which we are very sensitive about the war, we should always remember that individuals who do not respect rights and laws of their own citizens are not expected to be sensitive about rights and laws of those who are different. First, we have to stop the war which sneakily continues in ourselves.
Let us now have a look at excuses for individual armament. For what reasons do our people demand guns? According to a research made by BAPAM, among 10,000 applications made to receive a gun license, breakdown of excuses presented by applicants is as follows:
For business risks 35%
Just to keep one at home 23.6%
As a field of interest or hobby 16.7%
For hunting or shooting 12.7%
For professional reasons % 6.8
As a souvenir, in other words through transfer from someone else 5.2%
These are reasons declared on paper and made up to comply with the law. On the real side, there are actual reasons indicating that the problem is much worse. Let us now list these.
As you know, our people, mostly men are armed; therefore, we wont be mistaken if we say this: men are armed because of their primitive motives which they cannot control. People are born with two basic motives: reproduction and violence. These motives have be trained since early ages. Satisfying them in an uncontrolled way causes psychological disorders in late ages. Acting upon this fact, the Umut Foundations commenced the campaign known as Saving Children from Toy Guns. Our message is as follows: do not try to suppress the violence motive which exists in your children since their birth; the right thing is to teach your children how to control such motive. A toy gun held by a child turns into a real gun at his adolescence and a person who was not taught to control his primitive violence motive will use it sooner or later.
Another reason for individual armament is the desire to find favor in the society. A gun is the symbol of thrust, admiration, being superior and winning in our society and some other societies as well.
According to Freud, a gun is quite clearly and sharply the symbol of manhood and actions carried out by a gun are parallel to the actions carried out by the organ of the manhood.
A gun is the symbol of showing power, heroism, beating, doughty and winning victory.
The actual reason for those who obtain a gun showing life safety as an excuse is the feeling of non-confidence in the society and in themselves, which they are actually unaware of. Those who do not trust the society and themselves hide under the shadow of guns.
Moreover, we know that firing a gun is a way of expressing joy, happiness and respect within our society. In other words, individuals in our society do not express only their negative feelings, but also their any kind of feelings. That is why supporters of both the winning team and the losing team fire after the end of a football match. Here, this comes to our minds: a man does not cry and does not laugh.
Another reason for demanding guns is that using a gun has become a public tradition. This is not true. Holding a gun is not a tradition of Turkish people. This is the tradition of all primitive people in the world. Primitive people use guns. As the level of civilization elevates, this tradition is gradually eliminated. Which people are armed in our society? Men. Turkish people are not only constituted by men. Women are not armed.
Another reason for armament is fear. The media which is expected to be an effective means of education makes news and exaggerated programs which unfortunately blow fear within the society. Violence is too often given place in series and gun is put forward before us as a solution to violence. Those who have been subject to violence or those who are afraid do not go to the police, but rather obtain a gun.
A man has to have a gun. Armament of boys in our society takes place at the age of circumcision. For a boy to get into the group of adolescents, he definitely has to touch a gun, to learn using a gun and to learn manhood values brought by the gun. Blood feuds and honor killing. Our children are grown based on the tenet that they will obtain themselves a respected position in the society, they would gain fame and fortune and they would be heroes, if they kill a man for either of these two reasons.
Is there a fashion for arms? Yes, there is. Guns of various colors and types are put into the market. The most expensive gun and the glossiest gun, gun with golden grip, and gun with inlaid pearl Individuals show their guns to each other and show off. Just like in cell phones; owning a gun is fashion whether it is needed or not.
Beyond all the reasons mentioned here, people are simply obtaining guns to commit crimes.
Committing suicide. There is nothing as fearful as problematic people obtaining guns. An individual who has the slightest personality disorder can shoot or commit suicide for any simple reasons. For those who want to commit suicide, there are many methods, however committing suicide with a gun gains statute to the person.
After having listed actual reasons of individual armament, it is necessary to remember this very important point once more: a gun aggrieves both sides, in other words the one who kills and the one who is killed.
After having thus touched upon the concept of individual armament, what is the role of our women concerning this social problem?
In a researched carried out by the Forensic Medicine Institute, covering last 12 years, we see that guns are used at a rate of 35% in all spouse killing incidents.
In a study carried out in 2000 by BAPAM Bakırköy Prison for Women and Juveniles, the only prision for women in Istanbul, it is seen that 40% of woman prisoners are imprisoned of killing people and about 80% of those killed by these women are their husbands. The biggest reason why husbands are killed with guns is that women kill their husbands with their husbands guns.
If we are to pay attention, we have not yet touched upon anything like women getting armed. We have identified guns with men, because this is the reality. But, as a result of men getting armed, those who are always aggrieved are women and children, just like in wars.
While ending my speech, I want to mention that the role which women have to play regarding individual disarmament must be as follows: let us oppose armament of men. Let us first erase from our heads that using guns is the tradition of Turkish men and then start speaking about it as the primitivism of men. Let us not accept this unculture of violence as a tradition. What lies beneath this backward culture is the pressure over women and children. Men are brought to a position in which they protect and wipe off honor. Such wiping is carried out by slaughtering women with guns.
In todays picture, individual armament is our social problem which we have to take into account very emergently. The problem may be eliminated through lawmakers taking measures and by means of education. Training our children is our duty, as women, for the light of us and future generations.
I think that I made this speech at the right meeting and thank you for listening to me.