With increasing intervention to local politics in Kurdish provinces that set off as a part of the state of emergency declared after the 15 July coup attempt in Turkey, many women’s activities from fighting violence against women to women’s employment are under threat.
* A trustee (kayyum) in Turkey is the person appointed by the government to manage institutions, usually publicly traded commercial entities, until a new management is in place. But with the state of emergency — declared after the failed coup attempt — the trustee system has expanded to cover municipal, cultural and religious institutions.
Sevgi Çifter / 5 Harfliler
“You don’t see, you don’t know! Because they don’t want us to be seen, they ask us to get lost in absence!”
These words belong to a young woman. She was slender. She did not sound gruff, she wasn’t shouting. The words flowed from her mouth like a swollen river. She couldn’t stop her voice from shaking. Another thing she couldn’t stop was her tears. They were streaming involuntarily from her eyes. But she continued her speech: “Remziye Bor was 7 months pregnant. She had just arrived from Yüksekova. They raked her home at a time when she was alone. They saw that she was pregnant. She died 2 months later. Her baby is now motherless…” And she continued while her eyes were scanning the hall: “Did you know?”
She also said: “We have come to this day by resisting male domination and the oppression of the tribes in our region. We provided training for 1,300 women in 5 months. We have a shelter. However, after the state of emergency, it has become difficult for us to reach women due to sexual violence and oppression against Kurdish women. The police does not say you can’t do business right now. But every day, bombs explode in four different neighborhoods. If a bomb goes off in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir, it’s instant news, but no one hears about the bombs in Kurdish provinces. While we were struggling with both the male state and the men in the society, also a trustee came.”
Yes, my point in this article is gender equality practices and experiences in municipalities where trustees were appointed in Kurdish provinces within as part of the state of emergency declared after the 15 July coup attempt. This subject was discussed at Women’s Shelters and Counseling/Solidarity Centers Congress, which has been held for 19 years. “Local Administration Approaches in Combating Violence Against Women, Collaboration Opportunities with Women’s Organizations” were discussed with the participation of 350 women from all over Turkey at the congress convened in Adana last month.
The women, who did not throw up their hands in despair and continued to organize their struggle against the male-dominated system for years, told firsthand what they went through during the state of emergency that followed the July 15 coup attempt, as well as their relations with local governments.
At the congress where I attended for the first time as the representative of the Women Writers Association, I went to the workshop entitled “Opportunities, Challenges, Suggestions in Combating Violence Against Women for Local Governments.” One of the subtitles of the workshop was “Experiences of those who carry out women’s work in municipalities where trustees are appointed.” I thought that it would be the best experience I can have these days to listen to the practices in Kurdish provinces, which are not covered by the mainstream media. What I will convey here are my impressions from this workshop.
In many parts of the country, women’s units, which mostly remained on paper or continued their work in the form of training and allocating halls directly under the mayors, were working under the name of women’s policies directorate in all municipalities in Kurdish provinces. I say “were” because as of September 11, 2016, trustees were appointed to twenty-four of them. (This figure increased to 34 with the last appointments. The number was 24 on the date of the meeting).
In many cities in the western part of the country, if you hand the microphone to the public and ask, “What is a trustee?”, the answers you would get are not the same as the answers that women in Kurdish provinces will give to this question. Because, although it is a legal term which is defined as “a person who is authorized by the official authorities to manage a certain property for a certain period of time or to do a certain job”, the first thing that the trustee does when appointed to municipalities in Kurdish provinces is to shut down anything related to women, to ignore them, not to employ them.
For example, the trustee who started to work in Silvan Municipality, first closed the women’s council, the workshops where a hundred women who were subjected to violence gained their economic independence, and also shut down the cafeteria run by women, dismissed 25 women and confiscated the files of women who were subjected to violence. So these women have no privacy anymore. The trustee now has all the information of the women who told the women employees in Silvan about their experiences of violence or other grievances and who believe that this information will be kept confidential (for their life safety).
At the Municipality of Van Erciş, the trustee first closed the directorate of women’s policies and then the kindergarten. Yes, you didn’t read it wrong, kindergarten! In Van İpekyolu Municipality, women’s shelters and kindergartens were not closed, but all units engaged in women’s work were rendered inoperable by cutting their budgets. Handicraft workshops in Van Özalp were immediately closed on the first day of the trustee appointment.
A trustee was not appointed to the Municipality of Urfa Halfeti, but all its activities were subject to the approval of the district governor. All budgets were reconsidered. Although they budgeted for the Directorate of Women’s Policies, all its bank accounts were subsequently confiscated. Women from Halfeti have to travel 150 kilometers for the slightest job. Because they cannot reach the district governors closer, they are on leave. The Women’s Center was not closed, but it is raided by the gendarmerie and police three times a day. Therefore, women are afraid to come to the center.
The trustee closed the women’s center in Batman, as soon as he was appointed. However, women from Batman surrounded the center, and in the face of resistance, the trustee denied that he closed the center. However, ss soon as he returned to the municipality, his first job was to close the Women’s Policies Directorate. As a result, the women’s center was also shut down.
You can read the rest of the article in Turkish here.
*Translated by SES Equality, Justice, Women Platform.