Aslı Zengin, the assistant professor at the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, shares the gendered, sexual and racialized fault lines that have deepened the impact of the earthquakes in Turkey, as well as her account of the feminist solidarity and support campaigns.
Aslı Zengin / Jadaliyya
Disasters reveal and intensify already existing relations of power and forms of discrimination and exclusion. Turkey, Kurdistan and Syria have not been exception to this harsh reality since several cities were fatally hit by earthquakes beginning on February 6. This disaster has once again shown that women, queer and trans people are among those who shoulder the harshest costs of the earthquake. Below is a brief collection of notes that lays out the gendered, sexual and racialized fault lines that have deepened the impact of this catastrophe, as well as an account of the feminist solidarity and support campaign immediately organized by women and LGBTI+s across Istanbul and Diyarbakir in response. Since day one, we, the Feminist Solidarity for Disaster Group, have been working together with the two major Kurdish women’s organizations in Diyarbakir, the Rosa Women’s Association and the Free Women’s Movement (TJA), who have shown strong presence in relief efforts especially in the absence of the state in the earthquake zone and in the face of women’s dismissal for their particular situation and needs. I am writing this piece to call on an international feminist solidarity and support for the already growing feminist coalitions between women, queers and trans people across Turkey, Kurdistan and Syria. And I am writing this piece by using a collective subject “we,” as all these experiences and knowledge have emerged from the feminist collective relief efforts I have been part of for the past month.
Purple Trucks for Adıyaman and Antakya/Samandağ
The idea of Purple Truck was first raised by Kurdish women who were working in the earthquake zone. They themselves were impacted by the earthquake in Diyarbakir. At the same time, they were the first ones to show up for emergency relief efforts, canvassing with women in neighbouring towns impacted by the earthquake to understand women’s specific emergency needs. As feminists in Istanbul, we started holding a series of meetings and formed the Feminist Solidarity for Disaster Group to immediately participate in these relief efforts. While a group of us had already traveled to the earthquake zone to work in the rubbles in the first week of the earthquake, the rest of us initiated the Purple Truck Campaign for Adıyaman.
Based on daily updates from the city, we revised the list of emergency items to be transported to Adıyaman. Our campaign was based on raising public awareness about these women-specific needs, and storing item-specific donations in three main locations across Istanbul. These items included hygiene kits, menstrual pads, wet wipes, diapers for kids and seniors, slippers, underwear, clothing, washbowls, brooms, toys, color books, soap, kolonya[cologne], shampoo, detergent, toilet tissue, paper towel, bulks of assorted grain, veggie oil, and flour. Once we filled up the truck, it departed from Istanbul on February 21. We were afraid that our truck would be stopped and taken over by the Turkish security forces, as had happened to many relief vehicles and tents that were donated by civil society organizations and political rivals to the AKP. We had to be discreet about the feminist label of our truck until we secured a large depot in Adıyaman and the truck reached there because the state could have also taken over our vehicle and appropriated our solidarity work by stamping the name of its own institutions on the donations.
On the same night, a group of us also took a flight to Adıyaman to distribute women the items according to a designated list of neighborhoods and villages. Friends who remained in Istanbul started the organization of another Purple Truck Campaign, this time for Antakya/Samandağ. The rest of this essay is about only Adıyaman, as I was part of the team who traveled to this city.
The City of Adıyaman
Adıyaman is a Kurdish majority town with a significant population of Alevis. Fundamentalist Islamist religious orders, such as Menzil, also has a strong presence here. There are ongoing allegations that children who lost their families in the earthquake have been given to Menzil for adoption and the state remains silent about it. One feels the conservative religious and moral culture in the city. Yet the city’s significant Alevi population struggle to maintain an alternative space against the existing conservative social and political atmosphere. For instance, Yeni Mahalle Cemevi, an Alevi faith and cultural center had become a chief location for disaster management in the absence of the state in Adiyaman especially in the first week. Cemevi had established a central depot to distribute people their emergency needs. Its building was reorganized into a shelter for survivors. Later, especially after the first week, they starting facing pressure by the state.
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