In her weekly column, Gülseren Onanç, the Founding Chair of the SES Equality and Solidarity Association, shares the inspirational story of Diyarbakir’s only female mukhtar Dilek Demir with the broad theme of women’s participation in politics in Turkey.
Gülseren Onanç
“My school apron was stripped off, and I was dressed in a wedding dress. I became a child bride. My father forced me to marry violently by beating me. I was against it; I wanted to study and become a police officer. I love my neighbourhood. I love serving. Even though I was taken out of school, a love of reading remained in me. I took an oath not to let anyone, especially girls, leave school,” says Dilek Demir, who has been working as a mukhtar for Muradiye neighbourhood in Diyarbakır’s Bağlar district.
When Dilek took office, the first thing she did was to hang a petition-complaint box on the wall of the mukhtar’s office. What has been named Dilek’s “Wish Box” was a box of secrets in which the unspoken problems of the neighbourhood are written on little ballots. The only key of the box is in Dilek’s pocket. She is the one that opens and closes the box.
Being a child bride is the destiny of our geography. The little girls who are forced to be brides secretly leave messages for help in the wish box. Dilek has sworn an oath to fight that. “With this box, we saved the lives of 40 of our young girls. Currently, most of them have graduated from school, most of them are professionals. This box has been really helpful” says Dilek Demir.
Dilek Demir is a wonderful example of how a woman can change society by getting involved in politics. Women can produce solutions on the victim’s side against the powerful, unlike the male politicians of the patriarchal system.
One hundred years have passed since Nezihe Muhiddin founded the first political party that demanded women’s suffrage and political rights during the establishment of the Republic. However, we are far from reaching meaningful participation of women in politics. We cannot talk about women’s language, political culture in politics and decision-making mechanisms. However, in Turkey, we had the “right to vote and be elected” before many other countries. Nonetheless, we could not fulfil Atatürk’s vital revolution, which aimed to overcome male-dominated politics that did not want to share power with women.
Last week, Istanbul Center for Political Studies published a report titled “Women’s Participation in Politics in Turkey: Barriers and Experiences in Political Life”. This report, which I participated in by sharing my experiences, deals with the obstacles faced by women politicians in their political careers, their experiences of struggle and suggestions for change.
The report asks the question, “why aren’t there more female politicians?” It groups women’s obstacles under three headings: structural, institutional, and cultural. The report argues that women who want to pursue a political career in Turkey are stuck with the leader-oriented political party systems. According to the report, the decision-making mechanisms of political parties are mostly controlled by men, and men dominate the parties’ candidate lists.
Politics is seen as a “men’s affair”, and women are considered unsuitable for politics, so women have to exert more effort to be present in this field.
Contributors to the report suggest that the nomination processes of political parties should be more egalitarian, and candidate lists should be more inclusive in order to increase women’s participation in politics. The participants argue that there should be a focus more on qualitative representation. In order to do this, they propose training for encouraging women to get involved in politics, empower women, and raise awareness of gender equality among men.
Women have no name in Turkish politics
As women’s organizations, especially KADER (the Association for Supporting Women Candidates), we have been asking the male leaders of political parties to take action for equal representation of women, either through campaigns or through mutual negotiations. At this point, we are far behind Russia, with 17% female representation in parliament, and Sweden and Finland, which have 46-47%, and are slightly ahead of Azerbaijan. In local governments, the rate is around 3%.
The CHP’s proposal for equal representation was rejected by the representatives of the People’s Alliance. Yet, there is no obstacle in front of the CHP to implement the 33% gender quota, which also exists in its statute. In the past weeks, I asked CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in light of discussions about coming to terms with the past, to tackle gender equality.
The Women’s Platform for Equality (EŞİK) carried forward the CHP’s proposal for the equal representation of women in politics as a result of the joint work carried out with the suggestion of 306 women’s organizations. It made the statement, “If there is no equal representation, there is no vote.”
The weight of women in politics is increasing in Europe
While the rate of female deputies in the New German Bundestag, which was formed at the end of the German elections, increased to 35 percent, there was a significant increase in the number of young deputies compared to the previous period. Four female ministers from the Green Party took part in the newly formed coalition government. Although Claudia Roth from the Green Party says that she finds the 3 percent increase in the percentage of women in the Bundestag very modest, I think that Angela Merkel, who served as the Chancellor of Germany for 16 years, fulfils an important function as a female politician role model.
After the Merkel period in Germany, 8 women and 8 men took part in the new cabinet of the government, which was established by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens and Free Democratic Party (FPD) coalition under the presidency of Olaf Scholz. Germany will have its first female foreign minister and its first female interior minister. It will also get its third female defense minister in a row.
On the other hand, after being elected the new leader of the ruling Social Democratic Party in Sweden, former Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson, who made history as the country’s first female prime minister by getting a vote of confidence from the parliament, took the prime minister’s seat by getting two votes of confidence from the parliament.
Development = women’s participation in politics
You can clearly see that there is a direct relationship between development and women’s participation in politics by looking at the gender index of the World Economic Forum. Iceland, Finland and Norway are in the top three, while Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan are in the last places. Turkey ranks 133rd among 156 countries. For this reason, women’s participation in politics is not only a human rights, but also a development issue. I believe that all responsible citizens, men and women, who want the development of the country, should support women to take an active role in politics.
How will women in Turkey exist in politics?
I have a clear answer to this question: We must take an active role in Turkey’s future with a new movement that will put pressure on politics. We were all excited about the proposal to produce and support feminist candidates from the women’s movement, which we talked about at the SES meeting in September.
Moreover, we have to do this not only because we have a democratic right but also to put an end to the regime change in our country. As the CEID report reveals, there has been an increasing influence of Salafi Islam in recent years. The Diyanet was given the task of protecting women and families. The name Women was removed from the name of the Ministry of Family, and dozens of efforts were made to create changes in the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) to legitimize early and forced marriages. The provision regarding the punishment of imams who marry children under the age of 18 has been abolished.
To end, I want to emphasise that we have to support Dilek Demir, who has protected 40 girls from getting married by resisting the male-dominated power structure that protects imams who marry child brides. We have to increase the number of people like her.
Women like Dilek gives us hope.