Defending Women, or Using Women to Target an Entire People?

What a Headline Reveals

“Named One by One: Four Turkish Women Targeted by Armenians.”

This was the headline Odatv chose for its report published on October 22, 2026. From the very first line, the roles of aggressor and victim had already been assigned: “Armenians” on one side, “Turkish women” on the other. Yet the story concerned criticism by Armenian journalist Harut Sassounian of political assessments published by four researchers at the Ankara-based Center for Eurasian Studies (AVİM).

Aygün Attar, Tuğçe Tecimer, Selenay Erva Yalçın, and Hazel Çağan Elbir had published articles at different times examining Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s regional normalization policies and his political disagreements with certain sections of the Armenian diaspora. In an article published in The Armenian Weekly on October 20, Harut Sassounian quoted from these texts and challenged the assessments presented by AVİM. He argued that the favorable reception of Pashinyan’s policies in these Turkish publications could reinforce suspicions that those policies served the interests of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The subject of Sassounian’s criticism was not the four researchers’ identity as women, but the political positions they expressed in their published work. His article contains no language disparaging their womanhood, targeting them on the basis of gender, or criticizing them because they are women. Nevertheless, Odatv presents a political disagreement as an incident in which women have been targeted.

The most significant manipulation in Odatv’s headline is the substitution of the subject of the criticism. Although the article itself identifies Harut Sassounian and discusses the writings he criticized, the headline replaces him with “Armenians.” This is neither an accidental nor an innocent choice of words, but a deliberate editorial decision. Highlighting ethnic identities, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals in news coverage is a well-established means of activating prejudice, fueling social polarization, and turning particular groups into targets. Here, Odatv attributes an individual journalist’s political criticism to an entire people while pushing the four researchers’ professional identities into the background and emphasizing their nationality and gender instead. In doing so, it transforms a political disagreement into an aggressor-victim confrontation constructed along ethnic lines.

The Sexism of Defending Women

Defending women against sexist attacks is not the same as portraying them as people who need protection from political criticism. The former upholds women’s right to participate freely and equally in public life; the latter can reproduce a paternalistic approach that undermines their intellectual autonomy. The problem with Odatv’s reporting is not that it identifies the four researchers as women, but that it uses their gender to turn political criticism into a narrative of victimhood.

The four researchers are women working in their respective fields, publishing political assessments, and participating in public debate. They possess the knowledge and intellectual resources to substantiate their positions, assess the criticism directed at them, and respond when necessary. Defining them through a victimhood identity detached from their ideas pushes their competence and their standing in public debate into the background.

Women’s presence in public life becomes meaningful not merely through visibility, but through recognition of women as individuals who take responsibility for their ideas and actions. Subjecting a woman’s political views to criticism does not diminish her public standing. On the contrary, recognizing women as equal participants in political debate requires evaluating their ideas according to the same critical standards applied to everyone else.

Distinguishing sexist attacks against women from criticism of political positions is also essential to feminist struggle. Opposing the humiliation, intimidation, or silencing of women because of their gender does not mean that their ideas must be exempt from criticism. On the contrary, defining every political criticism as an attack on women obscures the specific nature of gender-based violence while undermining women’s equal standing in public debate.

Women and Nationalism: The Ethnic Identity of Victimhood

Presenting a journalist’s political views as the collective position of an entire people is more than an unjust generalization; it also erases the intellectual and political differences within societies. There may be Turks who agree with Harut Sassounian’s assessments, just as there may be Armenians who oppose them. No people consists of a single political position, a unified will, or an unchanging worldview. Yet framing political disagreements in terms of ethnic identity makes people with different views appear to belong to two homogeneous communities positioned against one another.

Why, then, “Turkish women” rather than “Turkish researchers”?

In nationalist narratives, women are positioned not merely as members of the nation, but also as symbolic figures representing its honor, cultural continuity, and values deemed worthy of protection. As Nira Yuval-Davis explores in her book Gender & Nation, women’s roles in the construction of national identity extend beyond social life; the boundaries of the nation and the terms of belonging are also symbolically defined through women. Consequently, an alleged attack on women can be transformed within nationalist discourse into a threat against the nation as a whole.

Odatv’s emphasis on “four Turkish women” turns political criticism into an appeal for national solidarity. Rather than examining whether the researchers’ arguments are valid or flawed, it creates opposing camps around the ethnic identity of the person criticizing them.

This kind of reporting invites readers to take sides according to national identity rather than evaluate political arguments. Readers who are expected to identify with the four researchers because they are “Turkish” may redirect their reaction from the journalist who made the criticism toward an entire people. An intellectual disagreement thus becomes material for social tension constructed around ethnic belonging.

An explicit call for hatred is not necessary to make an entire people a target. Attributing one individual’s words to an entire ethnic community is a form of discourse that assigns collective blame and reinforces prejudice. Given the history of hostility, discrimination, and hate speech directed against Armenians in Turkey, a headline such as “Turkish Women Targeted by Armenians” is not merely a problematic journalistic choice. It is an intervention that reproduces existing prejudices.

In this reporting, the narrative of victimhood constructed in the name of women and the collective targeting of Armenians reinforce one another. Women’s identity becomes a means of mobilizing nationalist solidarity, while Armenian identity is used to construct a threat against which that solidarity can be directed. The claim to be protecting women thus serves the creation of an ethnic antagonism rather than the defense of women’s rights.

What Odatv has done goes beyond reporting on political criticism. Instead of engaging with Sassounian’s arguments, it uses the headline “Four Turkish Women Targeted by Armenians” to steer readers toward taking sides along ethnic lines. Journalism has a responsibility to make disagreements visible and create space for critical debate, not to recast those disagreements in ways that foster hostility between communities. Odatv’s editorial choice demonstrates how the appearance of defending women can be used to target an entire people.