A Turkish man assaulted a young woman on an Istanbul bus for wearing shorts during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The woman has been struck in the face on an Istanbul bus after a man allegedly asked her if she was “ashamed” to be wearing shorts. The incident led to a furor among women`s rights activists.
University student Asena Melisa Saglam boarded a local bus in Turkey only to become a victim of religious fanaticism. The whole incident was caught on CCTV inside the bus and the video went viral on social media.
Saglam was wearing shots, encountered a stranger in the bus who fumbled something under his breath. The man was seen sitting behind the woman struck her in the face. He slapped her so the side of her jaw hit the bus window.
As she was shocked by the assault, tried to hit back, only to get pushed, before the man hopped off the bus and escaped. Saglam said that throughout the journey, the man had been verbally harassing her by saying she should not be wearing shorts during Ramadan. One co-passenger got up to help the woman, visibly shaken by what had happened.
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The man was detained but following questioning in which he reportedly said he had been “provoked”, he was set free, causing a new outcry. Following the outcry, an order was given to re-arrest the man but it was not immediately clear if he had been detained again.
Saglam, 21, was quoted saying, “From the moment, I sat down he was making these remarks ‘you dress like this during Ramadan? You should feel ashamed to be dressed like that’.”
“The release of the attacker is a threat to all women,” the women’s rights organization We Will Stop Femicide Platform wrote on Twitter. “We will wear whatever we want outside. We will not give up our freedoms,” it read.
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