Passing the exam with the women’s struggle became more difficult for the AKP

Having created platforms forging mass unity among women, opposition continues to the AKP administration’s initiative to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention launched through the forums they have set up in many provinces such as İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Kocaeli.

Women will also come out in force on 5 August (today), said to be when the AKP Central Executive Committee is to convene on the matter of the Istanbul Convention, demanding not withdrawal from the convention, but rather its effective implementation.

Once the AKP’s intention to withdraw from the convention was voiced by the AKP’s very spokespersons at the start of July, all women’s groups came to the fore along with trade unions, labour organizations, intellectuals, arts world figures, democrats, opposition parties and various capitalist groupings down to the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's Association to express their opposition to the administration’s initiative to withdraw from the convention.

STANCE ON THE WOMEN’S STRUGGLE HAS DIVIDED THE AKP!

As the process has unfolded, the AKP and the radical conservatives and reactionary milieus clustered around it, for their part, have turned this initiative by the AKP into an opportunity to pour out their “misogyny!”

Indeed, with his words, “Just as we decided at that time and signed the Istanbul Convention, we can also decide now and withdraw,” AKP Deputy General Chair has reduced withdrawal from the convention to a technicality and the position of gaining “legitimacy” and “innocence” has seemingly lost its fizz!

We encounter a situation in which Akit columnist Abdurrahman Dilipak brands defenders of the Istanbul Convention “prostitutes” and calls on crony capital to do its bit, famous AKP parliamentarian Ahmet Hamdi Çamlı opines, “Women and men are not equal; equality is a huge commotion. You can’t get a hen to be a rooster and you won’t get eggs if you make a rooster into a hen. There is talk of violence targeting women; in my view, this is also wrong. Just as violence involves women and children, it also involves men. I mean, don’t men suffer violence?” comments wishful of withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention emanate from TÜRVA, headed by Bilal Erdoğan, and the Ensar Foundation, fresh in memories for its child abuse, and not a single AKP male deputy or leading AKP light comes out (dares to come out) in opposition to withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, but the Women and Democracy Association (KADEM), of which Erdoğan’s daughter Sümeyye Bayraktar is deputy chair and Communications Minister Fahrettin Altun’s wife Fatmanur Altun is an executive board member and which makes no secret of its support for the AKP’s policies, clearly proclaims opposition to withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.

These circumstances within the AKP show how deeply rooted this regressive leap on women’s rights is in the AKP. But, at the same time, this situation appears to be dividing the AKP into supporters and opponents of the Istanbul Convention. It will be no surprise if this division within the AKP comes at a cost to the AKP.

THE ISTANBUL CONVENTION IS THE LAST STRAW FOR WOMEN

What has differentiated the AKP from other parties since its founding years has been the greater support it has courted from young people and women. In the years that will go down as its golden age in which the AKP “won every election,” it towered up from these two bases.

However such developments in recent years as the spreading and firm embodiment in statutory regulations of the perspective that views “women as second-class people” the AKP has always touted, the defence of child-age marriage and initiatives to force children to marry their abusers, manoeuvres undertaken for women’s murderers to be pardoned, the spreading of propaganda whereby AKP officials starting from Erdoğan portray women’s demand for sexual equality as if a demand for “biological equality” and which says, “The equality of women and men does not apply in terms of their creation (congenitally),” the soft spot towards religious brotherhoods’ and the jihadist mentality’s mindset that goes as far as imprisoning women in the home, inviting trouble with the dissemination treated as freedom of speech of “fatwas” which aim to expel women from all areas of social life of the “legal counsellors” who court favour and support from the AKP … and, finally, the mooted nixing of the Istanbul Convention which constitutes the statutory basis for defending women’s equality right and protecting against violence appear to enhance “the last straw that breaks the camel’s back” aspect for women who support the AKP and continue to a large degree to do so even if thinner on the ground nowadays.

WOMEN WILL MAKE THEIR PRESENCE FELT TODAY

In fact, the poll Gezici Research released at the end of July shows the AKP’s share among the female electorate, which stood at 55 per cent, to have declined to around 45 per cent.

Hence, just as with young people, the AKP is also losing its supremacy in support among women.

Most certainly, the AKP is best aware of this fact. Nevertheless, it does not abandon such initiatives perceived to be “misogynic” in women’s circles, but, on the contrary, keeps on touting them, because the mindset of a “conservative society” the AKP has placed at the foundation of the single-man rule does not perceive women to be “equal citizens with men,” but “second-class people who raise children ready to be martyrs and war fallen and merit entry into heaven as mothers of the conservative family.”

At the stage reached today, getting women’s votes is no longer everything for the AKP. On the contrary, the fundamental accentuation is now on the mission for women “to be the mothers of the conservative society.” And this also harbingers a deprioritization in the AKP’s approach to women. And it would be no mistake to say that this “repositioning” also lies behind the AKP bringing the issue onto the agenda top-down in the form of the Istanbul Convention.

Developments show that the AKP has long wished to settle scores in its struggle with women but its chance of success in this struggle has declined significantly even compared to what once was.

However, the positive unfolding of this process will not come automatically and the continued decisiveness of the masses of women to struggle around their demands will determine the course of developments.

Consequently, the stance of the women who make their presence felt today will provide important pointers as to struggle for democracy, just as much as for the women’s struggle, in the upcoming period.

(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)