You only have to glance at her daily show Woman's Voice to see why Turkish TV agony aunt Yasemin Bozkurt is compared to Oprah Winfrey. In front of a studio audience, her guests complain of children who've run away from home, violent husbands and invasive in-laws. Bozkurt's guests on April 15 were the Ozbeks, whose daughter was murdered by her husband. He was convinced of her infidelity. Newspapers reported that an argument erupted between the Ozbeks and the murderer's father, who had phoned in. 'I'll make you pay for this,' Kemal Alp shouted. The next day, Alp gunned down Muammer Ozbek and son Yusuf outside a police station. The murders have sparked outrage over Turkish tabloid TV and thrown a spotlight on the abuse of women in a country eager to join the European Union. For sociologist Ayse Oncu, the vilification of these shows has a lot to do with the audience they cultivate - lower-middle class housewives. It's not for nothing, she points out, that the women's afternoon programmes that have mushroomed over the past two years are condescendingly termed 'shanty-town TV'. 'The assumption is that [the women] can't distinguish between fact and fiction and need to be protected,' she said. But it is not only the television these women need to be protected from, she says. Often it's their own families. An Amnesty International report last year said a series of surveys suggested about half of Turkey's adult female population has been a victim of domestic violence. Some argue the tabloid programmes give women a voice concerning domestic violence and other issues. 'These people had no voice. Now that they do, what they are saying should be taken as an alarm signal,' said Haluk Sahin, a leading newspaper columnist.
