Wednesday 31 March 2010

4) Have you ever seen a "Hanife"?


A young scapegoat

Sevgi Soysal interprets a severe issue of Turkey in the story "Hanife" on her book "Barış Adlı Çocuk". Hanife is just 15 years old young girl. She wants to be important because nobody care about her, her mother as well. For the first time, Hasan gives she something to make her feel herself important. To be with Hasan in hayloft can seems dangerous for her life, but she already doesn't have anything to lose in her life. She is already scapegoat. I doubt whether, in villages like Hanife lives, there are girls who have different fortunes from Hanife or are happy to have their life.

Let change the story process. If Hasan didn't rape hanife and she wasn't sacrificed for honor, What would happen? Would Hanife be good and glad her life? It is slight probabilty!! She either gets married with a man who is not accepted by Hanife or she always be under the pressure and no chance to tell anyting. She have only right to consent what society give her.

it is awful, isn't it? Can you imagine it? or Have you ever seen a "Hanife"?

Yes, I saw! She was 17 years old and she were gotten married with a 58 year old aged man by her father for money. Also, aged man have already 6 wifes. After nearly 9 months, they have a son. A few year later, the son died and old man divorced the little girl. She had no crime to be punished. Nevertheless, the man must punish someone because of death of his son and the scapegoat was ready to be punished.

Now, she is a 23 years old widow woman. She couldn't feel in love another man and she will never feel in love in future. If she wants to be with a man, she will announced as a whore! So, she has been convicted to be alone her lifelong or she will be gotten married with another old man who want to be with her.

Now, tell me! Is it better that death?

I say " NO!". We can be far away from girls like Hanife in our daily life we used to see but everyday hundred of girls and women in Turkey still suffer from being not "Man" and "scapegoat". You may not do something for make their conditions better, but you can give thanks for not being in their shoes as a girl.

3) Presentation weeks




Practice Presentation

Eventually, presentation weeks started in Sonja's secions. I didn't hear that another teacher has had students prepare "practice presentation". However, in my mind, it is really efficient activity because we can see our faults and mistakes at the first time as practice presentation. Therefore, we can prepare better final presentation at the second time. For example, last semestre, when I was at Sonja's course again, I and my friends determined our defficiencies we couldn't be aware during powerpoint slides preparation, and we bewared of making same mistakes. After all, it became precisely satisfaying final presentation.

Again this semestre, my presentation group faced several problems at this time. I and Zeynep were extremely sick. Hence, Reşide and Didem were obliged to prepare whole presentation. We cannot help them. Our presentation was really good, slides were so funny and our classmates appreciated all of us but we couldn't manage order of slides, it was mixed up. And the must important issue; it couldn't be a team work because of that Reşide and Didem were so tired :( So, we decided to that we will do our presentation as soon as we take the presentation subject :)Just in case..

Monday 8 March 2010

2) Research Paper


Honour Killing

"Töre" is a concept which belongs to Turkish Society. It is a kind of unwritten constitution which includes customs, traditional and moral rules and determines the places of different gender in society. In Turkey, the patriarchal society, on one hand that "unwritten constitution" regulates the society and try to keep it well-behaved, on the other hand they try to achieve organization by oppressing to women. The "chastity" builds up the principal structure of Töre in turkey and generally it is depended on women. The chastity equals woman. They must obey strictly to rules and breaking of traditional laws requires the most severe punishment. The woman must maintain her life under the shadow of rules by neglecting her thoughts and emotions. If there is a fault it must be punished, and usually it is resulted by homicide. The name of that kind of homicide is "honour killing". As far as I'm concerned, the honour killing is one of the critical issue which waits for solution at short notice, since still, in ever year, there are hundreds of women who suffer from honour killings especially in the east of Turkey. Therefore, I decided to do research on the subject of Honour Killing in Turkey and possible solutions about that situation. Even if it seems a little research for eng102 research paper, i hope i will analyse that subject deeply in my future academic and business life to provide abstract solution to society.