The adjourning of AKP Executive Committee, for a somewhat unconvincing reason, to discuss the withdrawal of Turkey’s signature from the Istanbul Convention is certainly a success. But women will continue walking together to display their decisiveness
Sevda Karaca
The AKP Central Executive Committee was expected to discuss the withdrawal of Turkey’s signature from the Istanbul Convention* on 5 August. The meeting has been adjourned; the stated reason was: “President Erdoğan having no programme in Ankara this week.” As to the next meeting, no precise date was given.
This adjournment is the result of the struggle women have long waged. However, we know that this adjournment means neither the debate, nor the struggle, is over!
The debate did not have its inception in Erdoğan’s pronouncement, “The Istanbul Convention is not dogma” and his nudging saying, “If the people so wish, let’s abolish it,” or AKP Deputy Chair Numan Kurtulmuş’s outburst, “The signing of the Istanbul Convention was a mistake.” The attacks that various religious orders and brotherhoods, publishing outlets like Akit and marginal spokespersons such as A. Dilipak, Sema Maraşlı and the Family Platform have long waged on a daily basis hand held aloft have been made to appear widely-circulated commentary with the AKP’s acquiescence, and virtually all resources have been marshalled to this end. Government spokespersons have signalled with these words that these attacks “may amount to something” and “religious orders and brotherhoods’ wishes may be complied with” and added flesh to the situation, and the attacks have changed level.
Fissures have evidently existed within the AKP from the very outset with views doing the rounds that annulling the convention would not lead to particularly good results. Information as to which ministers defended the convention and which ones wished for its annulment “leaked” from the AKP Central Executive Committee at which the matter was tabled. We then witnessed a lifting of the foot from the gas with the emergence on the women’s movement front in effective and widespread unity of a joint proclamation of, “We demand not discussion of the Istanbul Convention, but its implementation” and the waging of effective campaigns, and, for sure, with reaction starting to build up among pious, conservative women the AKP perceives to be its base.
A. Dilipak calling defenders of the Istanbul Convention “prostitutes” provoked great ire among women within the AKP. While canvassing in neighbourhoods and workplaces in opposition to the attacks on the Istanbul Convention, we heard such comments from AKP-voting women who were clearly troubled by this debate as, “They have insulted us at all times. We were previously the butt of insults from those saying, ‘What are you hiding beneath your headscarf?’ and are now regaled by those who bandy, ‘What are you doing headscarf notwithstanding? It’s enough already.’” There were large numbers of women who distinctly gave to be understood that their own support and labour were disregarded and they were not asked as to their wishes and were uncomfortable at their lives being left in the hands of such circles and vented their anger saying they had themselves campaigned for the AKP until now but, “Our daughters will be turned into people even lower than us.” Even if the women were uninformed as to what the Istanbul Convention is and why it is important, they drew a link between this convention and the violence-prevention law, were angry at the government for not preventing murders of women, complained of injustice, and spoke of increased poverty leaving women helpless and this condemning women to violence. And, almost like litmus paper, the AKP’s initiatives to pardon child abusers was constantly on women’s lips.
It must be said that comments of a supportive nature for the Istanbul Convention from the Women and Democracy Association (KADEM), certain AKP former ministers, ministers, deputies etc. have their origin in the anger that has accumulated among conservative, pious women essentially perceived of as the “base”. Something else courts attention about the stance that women within the AKP or who act as spokespersons in its vicinity adopt to serve as a kind of “mortar”: if, in the end, the decision within the AKP is to withdraw, they will also stand by this. This is not just a “token”; we know in the case of every initiative to usurp women’s rights until now that such attacks have been defended and who has striven so much to cloak them in legitimacy. All we have penned in the debates about these unfolding attacks is the repository of our memory.
We also see, as in KADEM’s announcement, the non-annulment of the Istanbul Convention being turned into a “bargaining tool” in return for a horrific implementation like pardoning child abuse through marriage. Moreover, on the matter of discrimination against LGBTI people, perceived as being society’s “soft underbelly”, messages are constantly given of, “We are opposed to LGBTI formations. We know they create social degradation.” With such attitudes, LGBTI people’s lives are dragged onto the negotiating table and reduced to a “card” stashed in the pocket.
Campaigning by platforms created through the fusion of widespread sections of womanhood and by campaign groups and especially by organizations campaigning among poor, conservative women through drawing a link between such attacks and attacks on other vital rights, and question marks raised spontaneously by the country’s actual situation have intensified the reaction to attacks on the convention among a widespread section of women. In such provinces as Istanbul, İzmir, Ankara, Kocaeli and Bursa, campaign groups surmounting provincial platforms formed to stand in total unity against attacks on the Istanbul Convention. In many provinces, provincial women’s platforms engaged in mutually coordinated planning to respond to such debate in the street. Combinations forged by women from very different circles, viewpoints and even classes around the minimum demand summed up in the sentence, “Let the Istanbul Convention be implemented” give expression to the common denominator over the course of all these attacks.
The adjourning of AKP Central Executive Committee for a somewhat unconvincing reason is certainly a success. But we know full well that we will be brought back into confrontation with every issue that is adjourned and it is wished to drop from the agenda if the organization that procures this step back dissipates and reaction subsides.
We said, “We are not abandoning our rights and our life” in articulation of the statement, “What we are talking about is our life and our right to live” which widespread sections of womanhood have adduced by way of unification and interconnection of many problems they have experienced. We will keep on so stating. Women, resolving to take to the street on 5 August in many provinces, will continue walking together to display this decisiveness.
(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)
* What is known as Istanbul Convention is the “Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence”, which was first opened for signatures in May 2011 when Turkey was the first signatory, followed by 33 other countries in later years.
However, there have been debates for some time among the AKP circles, initiated by some religious cults and communities, to withdraw from the convention or to express “reservations” on some of its clauses, on the grounds that the convention “damages traditional Turkish family structure” and “lays the legal ground for the LGBTI”.
Hediye Levent
Yusuf Karadaş
Yücel Özdemir