Jineoloji Academy member Elif Kaya spoke to ANF about the historical, social and contemporary dimensions of femicide, drawing on the analyses in Abdullah Öcalan’s Manifesto for Peace and a Democratic Society.
Kaya said a significant portion of women’s killings take place within the family, noting that the home, often presented as a safe space, has turned into a dangerous environment for women. She said that relations between women and men have broken away from their natural dialectic and are now shaped by “frozen antagonisms.” Kaya said, “This form of relationship does not rely on fluidity or transformation; it is based on annihilation and domination.”
Kaya stated that femicides stem from the perception of women as property, hegemonic masculinity, the legitimization of violence and accumulated historical-social structures. She described misogyny as a deeply embedded form of hatred within the social fabric.
She added that every attack on a woman is meant as an intimidation directed at all women. Kaya said, “From Özgecan Aslan to Ipek Er, from Pınar Gültekin to Medine Memi, we have seen how the state and the patriarchal system together built a protective shield around perpetrators across many cases. Standing against femicide is the responsibility of everyone who believes in a dignified and free life.”
Jineoloji Academy member Elif Kaya answered our questions as follows:
How do you interpret Abdullah Öcalan’s statement in his ‘Manifesto for Peace and a Democratic Society’ that the roots of femicide lie in frozen antagonisms and the absence of dialectical thinking? How should these concepts be understood in the context of today’s femicide crisis?
The current scale of femicide is at a level that surpasses the destruction of world wars. This is not confined to a single region, community or social group; it is a policy of annihilation carried out in different forms almost everywhere in the world. According to 2023 data from the United Nations (UN), 85,000 women and girls were killed in a single year. In Germany, presenting itself as a democratic and modern country, data from the Federal Criminal Police Office show that around 360 women and girls are murdered every year. Of course, these are only the documented cases. When we include the undocumented ones, the number reaches a far more alarming scale.
All over the world, every single day, women are being murdered by the men closest to them, by fathers, brothers, husbands, partners with whom they share the same table and the same roof. This is a profound crisis, a massive massacre, rooted in a deep socio-historical background. Unless this problem is confronted and the culture of femicide is dismantled, we cannot move forward in the name of society, democracy or freedom.
On 2 November, in Germany, Dilan Aras was murdered by her husband, with more than forty stab wounds inflicted on her body. I say ‘husband’ because these men are not partners in any meaningful sense; they are the continuation of a caste-like killer culture focused on domination and obliteration. How does a person go beyond killing to the point of destroying a body so completely that it becomes unrecognizable? Let us remember the case of Münevver Karabulut years ago: the killer hiding behind the mask of a ‘boyfriend’ dismembered the young woman’s body with chilling calmness and dumped it into a garbage container.
Relations between women and men have been severed from their natural dialectic
What form of social relations is being criticized as the main reason behind the rise in domestic femicides, and what does the concept of ‘antagonism’ signify in this context?
What is striking here is that these murders are happening in the very spaces we are told are safe, the family home and the domestic sphere. There is a widespread assumption that ‘public spaces are unsafe for women, while the family and the household are safe shelters.’ Strangely enough, however, most femicides occur within the family, and in most cases they are committed by those closest to women. What leads to these killings is the frozen gender relations that emerge on the basis of antagonism and imprint themselves on all social relations. In fluid and dynamic relationships, life unfolds not through antagonism but through transformation. Yet what emerges in relations between women and men today is not transformation, but an antagonism focused on destroying one another.
Of course, we cannot say it has always been this way. At some point in history, through a certain intervention, these relations were severed from their natural dialectic and pushed onto the path of antagonism.
What does antagonism mean? It means that the existence of one is defined through the absence or deficiency of the other; for one to be full and complete, the other must be incomplete or nonexistent. That is why, in today’s antagonistic relationship between women and men, instead of fostering life and fluidity, violence, domination and death have become more prominent.
Relations of ownership fuel the sadistic urge to kill women
When we look at the reasons presented for femicides, we can clearly trace the marks of frozen and immobilized relationships. Women are murdered by men when they refuse to submit to male demands, when they wish to live beyond the boundaries imposed on them, or when they want to live according to their own ideas. Men often justify killing women by saying things like: ‘I got angry, I was jealous, she dishonored me, she talked to someone on the phone, she didn’t dress properly.’ In other words, women are killed because of attitudes that view them as an extension of the man himself, as property belonging to him, and that refuse to acknowledge that a woman has her own life and will. When relationships are formed on the basis of ownership, they bring with them hatred, degradation and sadistic impulses that lead to killing women.
From which historical-social process is femicide understood to emerge? How do you connect ‘antagonism’ with the deviation from the dialectic of nature?
Of course, the history of this development goes back a very long way. We can say that today’s relationship between men and women is the first unequal relationship form in history. It has become a widespread and deeply rooted reality. This exaggerated hostility toward women is known in the literature as ‘misogyny,’ which means that women, simply because they are women, are turned into objects of hatred and subjected to annihilation.
Femicide is also the source of all social problems
In this context, femicide is not limited to the present day; it is a phenomenon rooted in a historical and social background and spread across almost every part of the world. It is also the source of all social problems. When the differences between women and men cease to unite and complement each other and instead turn into antagonism, dialectical development comes to a halt. In this frozen form of relationship, antagonism, rigidity and lack of development become dominant. As a result, relations emerge that focus on overpowering and destroying one another.
Yet in the dialectic of nature, differences do not exist to annihilate one another; they exist to enable change and transformation. In the earliest processes of social formation, humans acted in harmony with the dialectic of nature. For this reason, the differences between women and men developed not through antagonism or mutual destruction, but through sustaining life. Despite their differences, the aspect of complementing one another was more prominent. It was only when the differences between women and men began to turn into antagonism that the chain of femicide, carried out by men who held power, began and continued to this day. In this sense, a deviation from the dialectic of nature and from nature itself took place. Within this framework, domination over nature and over women developed in a male-centered way.
The ‘first rupture’ between women and men played a defining role in shaping history
It is necessary to say a few things about the historical background of this issue. Although we do not know exactly when the relationship between women and men first began to deteriorate, archaeological findings show that the mother-goddess culture developed around 30,000 years ago, and that a masculine culture dominated the Göbeklitepe–Karahantepe region approximately 12,000 years ago. According to the data uncovered through archaeological excavations in Urfa (Riha) and its surroundings, there was a belief-centered masculine culture shaped under the leadership of men. Abdullah Öcalan defines this situation as ‘the first rupture in history.’
This initial separation between women and men later played a decisive role in shaping history. The traces of this antagonism and conflict between women and men are clearly visible in mythological narratives. In some myths, the body of the mother-goddess is torn apart by the son to create a new world. In other words, the mother culture and its social fabric are destroyed, and a new world is built under the leadership of the son. This becomes a thought system and a culture that is put into practice. Of course, this is not confined to mythology. In social life as well, relations between women and men are shaped by the same tension and the same logic of mutual destruction. There is no difference between Dilan’s body being dismembered by her husband and Marduk tearing apart the body of the mother-goddess Tiamat. The only difference is that the brutality has intensified. The proof of masculinity becomes the subjugation or annihilation of women. The widespread femicide we see today is rooted in this constructed understanding of masculinity.
The reason femicides do not spark public outrage is hidden acceptance
How do you explain the role of the alliance between men and the state in sustaining violence against women? In this context, with which arguments is violence against women understood as conveying a social message?
While men are constantly pressured to prove themselves and to be powerful, women are conditioned to submit and obey. Because relations between women and men are trapped within the dichotomy of subject and object, cut off from a dialectic of development, they are crisis-ridden and infused with violence. For this reason, men always seek to prove themselves. To achieve this, they must wield power, assert dominance and impose their will. Society legitimizes this by viewing a man’s domination over a woman, objectifying her and using all forms of violence, including killing, as acceptable. The reason why the many femicides we witness fail to create public outrage is this unspoken, hidden acceptance. Both the patriarchal system and the state maintain a tight alliance on this issue.
Let me put it briefly: violence against one woman is never limited to that one woman; it is intended as a message to all women. This is why the alliance between men and the state is strong and untouchable. In the cases of Özgecan Aslan, İpek Er, Pınar Gültekin, Şemse Allak, Medine Memi, Narin Güran and many others, we clearly saw how the patriarchal system and the state acted in full cooperation. For this reason, standing against femicide is the responsibility of everyone who seeks a dignified and free life.
Tomorrow: The strategy of resisting rape culture