As GZYV, we aim to spread awareness and join the fight to end violence against women. In Turkey, 38% of all women are subject to either physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. Women are being either attacked or killed every day to horrifying male violence.

To come up with a sustainable solution and find the cure to this social epidemic, we believe in giving women the knowledge and tools to protect themselves in danger. This is not a call to fight violence by violence but an imminent offer to help them in harmful situations as they can learn to protect themselves from attackers.

We created a free self defense campaign for women that feel the threat of male violence. We collaborated with Red Corner Academy, a martial arts academy located in Beykoz Kundura to teach basic self defense to women across Turkey. We called all women to attend our free classes. We started the campaign on 25 November 2021, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Our first step was taken in Samsun. On 10 December 2021, the first self defense course was held in Samsun with the special appearance of Zeycan Yıldırım. Bahçeşehir College collaborated with us as the location sponsor, and the course was held at Bahçeşehir College’s campus. 50 teachers of Bahçeşehir College attended the classes, learning about basic self defense. On 11 December, we had 2 separate sessions of 25 teachers each. Sessions were around 2 to 2.5 hours long.

GZYF Free Self Defense Classes For Women program has met Yıldırım Holding women employees as a part of March 8 International Women’s Day activities. Our women employees had a high interest to our self defense classes that are realized as a collaboration of GZYF with Yıldırım Holding HR Department. 3 different sessions had been conducted and in total 54 women employees attended the classes.

Our goal is to have the classes across multiple cities in Turkey with heavy emphasis on Samsun. GZYV believes that it is every woman’s right to self defend themselves, despite their socioeconomic background. Our goal is to spread the classes to other cities around Turkey during 2022.