ISTANBUL, Turkey, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Turkish men are taking to social media and the streets to protest violence against women by wearing miniskirts.
Ozgecan Aslan was a 20-year-old Turkish girl whose body was found burned in a riverbed on Feb. 13. Her family had reported her missing days before. She was allegedly sexually assaulted by a bus driver who was driving her home, and then she was murdered.
Turkish women had already started a social media campaign under the hashtags "#OzgecanAslan" and "#sendeanlat" (tell your story) on Twitter. The latter was meant to convince women to share stories about their own experiences with sexual assault and violence.
Now, the #ozgecanicinminietekgiy (wear a miniskirt for Ozgecan) hashtag is sweeping Turkey's Twitter and getting men and women to post photos of them wearing miniskirts in protest. Men are also showing up to demonstrations in miniskirts.
"The women's movement is trying to tell society, 'My dress is not an excuse for your rape or sexual harassment.' But society didn't want to hear these voices," lawyer and activist Hulya Gulbahar told CNN. "People try to find excuses for rapes and killings. But they didn't find any in this case, because Aslan was very innocent, purely innocent. The protest shows that a short skirt is not an excuse for rape."
Some grabbed their mothers' skirts, others wore their girlfriends'. #EteğiniGiyTaksimeGel #ozgecanicinminietekgiy pic.twitter.com/MhotZ3SmQw
— Zambak Tukan (@ZambakTukan) February 21, 2015Azerbaycan'da bir grup erkek, Özgecan cinayetini protesto etmek için #ozgecanicinminietekgiy kampanyası başlattı pic.twitter.com/i9BfJqpgRS
— Neden TT oldu? (@nedenttoldu) February 18, 2015
