An icy Friday morning in February that is said to be a reminder of a cold-blooded femicide. The Tempelhof-Schöneberg and Neukölln district offices have jointly invited people for the third time. Around 20 people in thick jackets and long coats stand on Tempelhofer Oberlandstrasse at the memorial stone for Hatun Aynur Sürücü, who was shot dead by her brother at this location 21 years ago today. Among those present is also her son Can Sürücü.
Can Sürücü slowly approaches the group of people. He is immediately surrounded by cameras and people who want to take photos of him or have conversations with him. But he doesn’t want to speak publicly today, but instead wants to remember his mother.
His mother, Hatun Aynur Sürücü, was forced into marriage at the age of 16 and was beaten by her forced husband. “Sürücü was made into an object,” says Neukölln district mayor Martin Hikel (SPD).
But Sürücü wanted to live a self-determined life and wanted to become the subject of her life again. After another argument with her husband, she fled, gave birth to her son Can, got her secondary school leaving certificate and began an apprenticeship as an electrician, the State Secretary for Equal Opportunities, Micha Klapp (SPD), recalled in her speech. “When her brother killed her, she was about to take her journeyman exam.”
A symbol for many other women
The commemoration of Sürücü is still necessary to draw attention to the increasing violence against women, emphasizes the equal opportunities officer for Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Julia Selge, to the taz. Life and death represent the many other women who were killed, whose names are not in the media, for whom there are no anniversaries, says Fatma Keser to the taz. She is chairwoman of the Pek Koach – Jewish-Kurdish Women’s Alliance e. V., the association works, among other things, on violence in the name of honor.
Sürücü’s death was also initially described as an honor killing. However, Keser believes it is important to continue using this term in order to make the specific violence visible. Every honor killing is a femicide, but not every femicide is an honor killing. “If we do not mention the motive of honor, specific structures of power and violence are made invisible.” For Selge and Meinhold, it is still important that the word is not exploited to reproduce racist narratives. “Murders of women because they are women happen everywhere,” says Meinhold.
While the taz talks to the three women about commemoration and concepts, while State Secretary Micha Klapp presents political measures to protect women in her speech and others lay flowers, Can Sürücü spends most of the time looking thoughtfully on the floor.
In the end he stands alone in front of the memorial stone for his mother. Neither remembrance nor the right terms will bring his mother back. In the end, the hope remains that the irreplaceable work of civil society and equal opportunities officers will continue to protect more women. So that no more women are murdered because they are women.