Dying to Divorce
The plight of women in Turkey is compellingly illustrated in Chloë Fairweather’s moving documentary.
The pivotal figure in Chloë Fairweather’s documentary set in Istanbul is a Turkish lawyer named Ipek Bozkurt who introduces herself speaking in English. She is deeply involved in a platform which declares its aims through its very name, ‘We Will Stop Femicide’. Filmed by Fairweather over some five years starting in 2015, she goes on to tell us the stories of two of her clients who would endure a long battle in the courts seeking justice and we follow that struggle in detail. First we meet Arzu who was made to marry at the age of fourteen. When she remonstrated with her husband, Ahmet Boztaş, over his involvement with another woman and asked for a divorce this caused him to shoot her repeatedly in the arms and in the legs. The second victim seen here is Kübra Eken, a TV presenter who chose to marry at twenty-eight but made a bad decision when selecting Nëptun. Two days after the birth of their daughter they had an argument about the baby whereupon Nëptun hit her four times causing serious damage leading to a brain haemorrhage. When we first see her she has been traumatised by what has happened and has lost the ability to speak normally.
The film begins with an opening statement to the effect that more than one in three women in Turkey suffer from domestic abuse and consequently Arzu and Kübra can be seen as representative figures. It is these two whose presence becomes central to Dying to Divorce even though Ipek is the one who tells their stories and takes an admirably strong stand both as lawyer and activist. Family scenes in the homes of both of them add to the richness of the film as we follow the two cases and witness the pitfalls involved. The latter stem both from the husbands disputing the claims against them and from the general attitude towards women that prevails in Turkey (an early scene shows President Erdoǧan praising mothers as such but denying that women are the equal of men and expressing the belief that those espousing women’s rights are prejudicial to society).
Chloë Fairweather’s film vividly exposes the lot of women in countries like Turkey and is welcome on those grounds alone, but in fact it goes much further. The period covered included the failed coup d’état of 2016 and the rigged constitutional referendum the following year so, while concentrating on the unjust suffering of women, the film also portrays a country where democracy is illusory. Extra details confirm this, be it Ipek’s tale of two friends arrested and treated as terrorists for criticising the government or the statistics quoted regarding the number of lawyers who have been killed on account of their views. Just occasionally a jump from Arzu to Kübra or vice versa seems rather abrupt, but their tales are compellingly told and very moving. In the circumstances it would be wrong to stress too much the fact that to my ears the film suffers from an irritating and largely unnecessary music score. Disappointing though this is, what Dying to Divorce has to say is far too important for this to matter.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring: Ipek Bozkurt, Kübra Eken, Arzu Boztaş, Aysen Kevas, Dr. Nevzat Alkan.
Dir Chloë Fairweather, Pro Chloë Fairweather, Sinead Kirwan, Seda Görkce and Özge Sebzeci, Ph Lilia Sellami, Ed Andrea Cuadrado and Paul Dosaj, Music Andy Cowton.
Dying to Divorce Ltd., London/Creative Scotland-Dartmouth Films.
82 mins. UK/Norway/Germany/Turkey. 2021. Rel: 26 November 2021. Cert. 15 .
