“I would have died if he didn’t,” said Çilem Doğan, a woman who has
become an icon of the women’s movement in Turkey after killing her
abusive husband who allegedly forced her into prostitution. Doğan was released on bail on June 20, after a local court controversially denied
her self-defense plea and sentenced her to 15 years in jail less than
two weeks ago.
“I desperately fired that gun, completely to
defend myself. I wouldn’t want him to die, [I wouldn’t want] anybody to
die but I would have died if he didn’t,” Doğan, whose release was
celebrated by feminists across the country, told daily Hürriyet in an
exclusive interview.
“I was enslaved by my emotions. My family
objected, but I nonetheless married him, ran to him,” the woman said,
describing the beginning of her marriage with Hasan Karabulut – a man
who had 19 criminal charges on record and was accused of drug dealing
and shooting a police officer.
Doğan said “systematic violence”
from Karabulut started on the 28th day of their marriage, leading her to
look for an escape by appealing to a lawyer and police officers in
addition to the public prosecutor’s office but failing to ensure
protection from her husband.
Although protection orders were
issued multiple times, they did not work as Karabulut declined to follow
the rules and there was no state authority to enforce them.
“He
wasn’t supposed to come home but he did, and no one could do anything
about it. No one managed to protect me from him,” she said. “He had a
criminal record, he was involved in all sorts of dirty things,” Doğan
added, saying Karabulut reached a new level when he tried to force her
into prostitution.
“If he didn’t die that day, I would have.
Because I told the police that he was dealing drugs, I reported him. And
he found out,” she said, explaining he came home with a gun, put their
daughter in a separate room and locked Doğan inside their bedroom.
“He started hitting me, pulling me by my hair. The gun was under the pillow. I acted early,” she said.
Commenting
on her 50,000 Turkish Lira bail, Doğan said her happiness and surprise
were beyond words, adding that she felt like defending all other women
subjected to violence across the country.
“I feel such
responsibility because many women in this country are subjected to
violence by men. Our names, social statuses may not be the same but we
understand each other perfectly well because, in the end, the pain we
feel is the same,” she said.
Doğan’s lawyer, İsa Ayanoğlu, who
was also a witness to all periods of the woman’s marriage, provided
further details of the abuse and expressed his hopes that the Supreme
Court of Appeals would reverse the judgement of the local court in the
southern province of Adana.
According to Ayanoğlu, five of six
judges in court ruled that Doğan’s case was intentional murder but the
chief judge said it was self-defense and included his dissenting
opinion.
Based on the chief judge’s dissent, the lawyer filed an
appeal to the court and demanded Doğan’s release – which was granted on
June 20.
Doğan was exposed to violence following her marriage
to Karabulut in 2013. She sought a divorce but gave up in the face of
threats from her husband, who said he would kill her family should the
divorce take place.
She was detained at her father’s house in Adana and soon confessed to the murder of her husband.
“Will women always die? Let some men die too. I killed him for my honor,” Doğan told police on July 9, 2015.
While
walking to the courthouse for a medical exam on the same day, Doğan was
photographed wearing a T-shirt reading: “Dear past, thanks for all the
lessons. Dear future, I am ready.”
Handcuffed between two police officers, Doğan also gave two “thumbs up” to reporters.
Family objects to bail release of Doğan
The family of the husband of Doğan has objected to a June 20 decision granting the woman’s release on bail.
The
lawyers of the family of Doğan’s husband, Hasan Karabulut, filed a
five-page objection petition to a higher local court in the southern
province of Adana after Doğan was released on a 50,000-Turkish-Lira
bail.
In the petition, the lawyers alleged that Doğan’s
descriptions of her marriage were incorrect, that she posed a flight
risk and that the ruling provided a negative example for social peace
and state sovereignty.
Karabulut’s older brother, Mesut
Karabulut, said they were following the case closely and were ready to
bring it “as far up as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” if necessary.