People in Turkey are routinely strip searched while being taken into custody over a tweet, visiting family members in prison or simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as in a dormitory. This is a humiliating experience, a form of sexual harassment that usually creates too much embarrassment for survivors to speak out in public. Strip searches have increased since the 2013 Gezi protests, and parliament has been made aware of the issue multiple times. In 2018, for example, the Ministry of Justice answered the allegations of strip searches, saying, “We didn’t conduct a search. They (those in custody) stripped naked on their own.”

Over the last couple of weeks, Turkish social media has been rocked by hundreds of women speaking out on video about their own experiences with strip searches. Most of these women are hijabis. Indeed, Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), brought the matter to the public eye in mid-September after thirty college students were taken into custody in Usak province and strip searched.

Not many people seemed to care until these women organized and spoke in front of cameras about their and their children’s horrifying experiences.

In response to Gergerlioglu’s statement, Ozlem Zengin, a lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said, “I have not seen any other lawmaker who terrorizes the parliament [as much as Gergerlioglu does].” When asked to elaborate on what she meant, Zengin said “Whenever [Gergerlioglu] speaks in parliament, he always talks about his own agenda. I do not believe there are strip searches in Turkey. It doesn’t happen.”