This article first appeared on The Media Line.
Ninety-eight female parliamentarians were elected in Turkey’s recent election, the highest number ever, but activists say this is but one small step towards equality for women in the country.
“Actually it’s not that great of a result,” Hülya Gülbahar, a lawyer and women’s rights advocate, told The Media Line. She points out that the percentage of women in the 550-seat parliament is still just 18 per cent, an increase of only four per cent and lower than the global average of 22 per cent. Furthermore, 37 of 81 provinces have no women candidates, including many secularist strongholds.
Turkey’s conservative ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) saw the number of its female parliamentarians fall from 46 to 41 (16 per cent of its total), and the secularist main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) got only 21 women elected (also 16 per cent of its candidates), only two more than the previous election. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) only has four women parliamentarians (five per cent).
If it were not for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which puts women’s rights at the forefront of its pro-minorities platform, the number of women in parliament would have actually decreased, Gülbahar points out.
The HDP operates under a system of male-female co-chairs at all levels, from mayors to the party leaders, and has pledged to increase women’s employment and fight gender discrimination in the workplace. Forty-eight per cent of its candidates were female.
Of all Turkey’s parties only the HDP has recognized the major role women played in the massive Gezi Park protests in 2013, Gülbahar said. “Women weren’t just behind the scenes but were right at the front.”
Filiz Kerestecioğlu is a feminist lawyer and one of the HDP’s new female parliamentarians. “Women will play a huge role in this party,” she told The Media Line. “Not only are we the spokespeople of the marginalized, we ourselves are the marginalized.”
Candidates from many of Turkey’s ethnic and religious minorities ran for election on the HDP’s ticket, as well as the country’s first openly gay parliamentary aspirant.
“One of the strongest forms of discrimination in Turkey is against women,” Kerestecioğlu explained.
Turkey ranks 125 out of 140 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2014 Global Gender Gap Index. Women constitute 80 per cent of the illiterate population, and fewer than a third of women have completed high school. Just 28 per cent of Turkish women participate in the workforce, compared with the European Union’s average of 63 per cent, and they earn 75 percent less than men.
Violence against women is also a huge problem, and almost half of Turkish women have been beaten by a romantic partner, with 142 women killed since the beginning of this year.
“One reason that women’s murders are rising is because of the attitude and ideology of the AKP,” said Gülbahar, describing the party that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan founded.
Kerestecioğlu agrees, arguing that AKP politicians have made many sexist public statements. “The AKP’s discourse is always abusive and discriminatory towards women,” she said.
Last summer Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç made comments that quickly led to a massive backlash on social media. “[A woman] will not laugh out loud in public,” he said. “She will not be inviting in her attitudes and will protect her chasteness.”
In 2012 Melih Gökçek, an AKP member and mayor of Turkey’s capital Ankara, made controversial remarks regarding abortion. “The baby is innocent; the woman should be decent and avoid the abortion option,” he said. “If there should be someone to be killed, the woman should kill herself, not the baby.”
President and former Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made several controversial remarks, encouraging women to have at least three or even five children, advising women to get married as soon as they have the opportunity and calling birth control “treason.” Though he has harshly condemned violence against women, he has also said their protection is up to men, because “God entrusted women to men.”
The AKP has undertaken initiatives praised by feminist activists, such as ending the ban on headscarf-wearing women from entering universities and parliament, and passing Turkey’s most robust legislation regarding the equal treatment of women. However, the activists are quick to point out that implementation of this legislation is extremely poor.
“In the judicial system, [Erdogan] has specifically found people who don’t believe in gender equality,” believes Gülbahar. “From the very top, right down to the smallest towns, all the ministers of education, health, religion, [and] police chiefs, all of them are men. And none of them believe in equality.”
Şenal Sarıhan is a feminist human rights lawyer and parliamentarian for the CHP. She suggests that the women’s movement, particularly civil society, has reached a mature phase in Turkey, but that the lower levels of society don’t reflect this, and neither does the government.
“Today we have many different women from different parties in parliament and they will fight together. These are very positive steps,” Sarıhan told The Media Line. “But at the government level and social level women still don’t take priority. They’re still outside of decision-making.”
Sarıhan argues that the record amount of women in parliament is a positive step, one of many, but there’s still much to be done. “In Turkey the fight for women’s rights has a long background. Having 98 women in the parliament today is the result of this fight, but it’s not enough.”
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