In her article Gülseren Onanç, the Founding Chair of the SES Equality and Solidarity Association, reflects on the loss we are experiencing due to the polarizing and exclusionary political environment around the World. She argues that the associsted heavy price falls especially on women.
Gülseren Onanç
It has been exactly one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. The year-long war has no winners and many losers. Over 300,000 people have been killed or wounded. Today’s Wall Street Journal summarized how this war has changed the world in the following eight points:
- The West came together
- The means and methods of warfare have changed
- America’s influence in the world revived
- The American war industry is gaining strength
- Russia and China came closer
- Global energy trends have changed
- Russia was left out from the world financial system
- Inflation rose globally
Even these headlines show how this year-long war has changed the balance of the world and how the World has evolved into a dangerous place.
The madness of war with no winners must be stopped
Commenting to the Guardian on the results of last week’s Munich Security Conference, Sevim Dağdelen, a member of the German parliament, put it this way:
“According to US general and chief of staff Mark Milley, there are no winners in this war. This should be used as an opportunity to freeze the conflict. There needs to be enormous public pressure on Western governments to move away from the logic of military escalation and towards diplomacy. The West bears a great responsibility for the escalation of this war. We need an immediate ceasefire without preconditions to stop this madness. We must not wait any longer. Negotiations must start and the senseless economic war affecting populations in Europe and the global south must be stopped.”
“If Ukraine does not win against Russia, authoritarian regimes will continue to threaten the international order,” said Sanna Marin, the prime minister of Finland, one of the two countries that applied to become a NATO member and a role model for the world’s youngest female politicians. Ursula Von Der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, says that this is a war of values and must be won.
The war next door, which affects the whole world, is likely to continue for some time.
It has been 19 days since the earthquake disaster in Turkey. Our wounds are still bleeding. The number of people who lost their lives has officially exceeded 43 thousand. There are still those who have lost their lives under the rubbles waiting to be dug out. The needs of earthquake victims for tents and containers have not yet been fully met.
Women who gave their lives to save their children
Tuğçe Özçelik, one of the volunteers who went to İslahiye, Antep from Istanbul with the Neighborhood Disaster Volunteers, says that being trapped under the rubble is patriarchal as well as class-based. She tells the story of Tuğba, who lost her life in the earthquake. During the earthquake Tuğba ran into the children’s room. She threw her two children out of the window so that they can survive. The husband was able to leave the house. Before she even had time to protect herself, Tuğba was trapped under the rubble of the building.
Government blocks aid from women’s organizations and civil society
A rights group has rightly argued that crisis management itself has turned into a crisis. While the government is trying to prevent aid from civil society, especially independent women’s organizations, some anti-gender groups close to the government are actively involved in disaster coordination in the region. Groups working on women’s rights demand the government to establish the necessary mechanisms to ensure that women and children affected by the disaster have access to psycho-social and economic support to prevent re-traumatization due to gender-based violence.
The government can be prosecuted in national and international courts
Former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Prof. Dr. Yakın Ertürk says that the political will that is unwilling, incapable and negligent in protecting people from the effects of natural disasters or at least minimizing the damages of disasters has opened the way for prosecution in national and international courts.
In the 100th anniversary of our Republic, there is war in our neighbors and great destruction in our country. But we cannot find the diplomacy approach, peace and reconciliation we seek in political decision-making mechanisms, neither in the world nor in the country.
Everything is focused on the mentality of one side winning. However, we know that if one side wins, the other side loses, this win is not peaceful and sustainable.
We know that in the war between Ukraine and Russia, one side cannot win, at least in the short term. Everyone in the world will lose, except for a few companies and governments. We know that the government will not win in the country. But we all lose with their polarizing and exclusionary practices. “We” and “our opponents” have a heavy price to pay, and we all pay for it, especially women. I believe we need to get out of this spiral as soon as possible and instead organize the mindset of “being all of us”.