A new Turkish television series developed by renowned actor Yilmaz Erdoğan has sparked public criticism for promoting gender-based violence and femicide.
Members of the public took to social media to criticize the series’ first trailer, saying it romanticizes femicide. The trailer of the series, “Pear Drops,” was posted with the caption, “It was my destiny to not only be your love, but to also be the perpetrator of your murder.”
The series concerns the murder of a female teacher at the hands of her husband, played by Erdoğan. In the trailer, as the perpetrator is taken to prison, a slow, romantic song plays in the background.
Fidan Ataselim, from the We will Stop Femicide Platform (Kadın Cinayetlerini Durduracağız), said she was outraged by the trailer. “Will someone explain what is going on here?” she asked on X, formerly Twitter. “How can femicide be romanticized and normalized like this? Thanks to you, murderers now have a romantic song and a TV script to make themselves feel better.”
Ataselim said if TV series wanted to include femicide in their scripts, they should start with how women’s lives were unraveled by male violence.
Lawyer Feyza Altun also expressed disbelief in the series’ trailer. “Is being the perpetrator of murder a poetic thing? I don’t understand… this is terrible,” she said on X.
Lawyer Hande Kuday she couldn’t believe that nobody in charge of the TV station thought the series was a bad idea.
Academic Elif Dastarlı said there was nothing romantic about femicide and shared a webpage that tracked the number of femicide cases in Turkey, which indicated that 376 women have died at the hands of men this year.
Femicides and violence against women are chronic problems in Turkey, where women are killed, raped or beaten almost every day. Many critics say the main reason behind the situation is the policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, which protects violent and abusive men by granting them impunity.
Turkish courts have repeatedly drawn criticism due to their tendency to hand down lenient sentences to offenders, claiming that the crime was “motivated by passion” or by interpreting victims’ silence as consent.
In a move that attracted national and international outrage, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan through a presidential decree pulled the country out of an international treaty in March 2021 that requires governments to adopt legislation prosecuting perpetrators of domestic violence and similar abuse as well as marital rape and female genital mutilation.
The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, is an international accord designed to protect women’s rights and prevent domestic violence in societies and was opened to the signature of Council of Europe member countries in 2011.
Erdoğan’s ruling allies have been calling for further rollbacks, urging the repeal of a domestic law that stipulates protection mechanisms for women who either have suffered or are at risk of suffering violence.
Since Turkey’s withdrawal from the treaty, Turkish authorities have been pressuring women’s rights organizations over their activist work.
Despite the pressure, the organizations have said they will continue monitoring violence and femicide in the country.
