Where is Seda Suleymanova?
It is important to remind ourselves that we stand on the shoulders of generations of brave people.
My wife was able to graduate from one of Turkey’s best medical schools because of the policies and investments from early on in the modern Republic of Turkey. Her graduating class had many women from all over the country.
Many of her peers were enabled by state-funded boarding schools that enabled talented kids to grow and develop in independent environments. This gave these young people a bit of insulation from family dynamics, economics, and often rigid traditional backgrounds.
It is an investment that has created generations of strong and accomplished Turkish women. My wife stands on the shoulders of generations of brave women in Turkey (and men who supported them) who weren’t willing to accept what was the status quo in the region.
Sadly, there are many examples in the region where we can see what happens today in the absence of both vision and investments.
This video shows the stories of a few brave Chechen women who were not content with being forced to live in a certain way. Women who wanted more out of their lives than to be assigned to live as someone’s plural wife.
One of them, Seda Suleymanova, managed to escape the Republic of Chechnya and begin an independent life in Saint Petersburg.
However, her small-minded relatives could not handle the “shame” of her choosing her own path and not conforming to the “traditions” of her family. They managed to track her down and convinced the Russian Police to send her to Chechnya, a republic of just 1.5 million people. That is a small social network, where most people are separated by just a few degrees from each other.
One of her friends wrote this piece describing her life in Saint Petersburg.
She hasn’t been heard from since her forced return to Chechnya. None of her friends in Saint Petersburg know her fate.
So as Russian and Chechen officials make their attempts to appeal for sympathizers outside their countries, it is important to ask them:
Where is Seda Suleymanova? Где Седа? Сулейманова Седа мичахь ю?