Historical step on path to progress

In the last couple of years, Turkish women have united to transform a dysfunctional Penal Code into one of the world’s most progressive on protection of women and their rights. Taking a united stand on the proposed Draft Constitution last year, 86 women’s groups signed a declaration that argued effectively that language identifying women as a group needing "protection" was unacceptable. These days, Turkey is using new gender-sensitivity training in the curricula of the army and state organizations.

Female representation in Parliament reached nine percent after the last general election, in 2007. Hastening efforts to form a gender equity commission, the 49 female parliament members from four parties began bringing proposals together in a united front. Their joint proposal Ğ owing much to decades of equal rights campaigning by Turkish women and NGOs Ğ finally landed in Parliament for approval on Thursday.

An NGO representative on the new committee, Dr. Selma Acuner, who co-founded the Association for the Education and Support of Women Candidates (KADER) told Bianet that the committee means an institutionalized spread of gender equality over all decision-making points. "It represents a turning point for the women’s struggle for equality."

The committee will have 25 members, with preference given to MPs with expertise in the area of women’s rights. CHP Adana Deputy, Nevingaye Erbatur, along with several other women in Parliament back enacting a quota system to ensure more political participation by women. On the other hand, more than half (29) of the female deputies are from the ruling AK Party, which has soundly rejected the possibility of quotas. This should make for a lively group. The committee’s impact could carry the indelible mark of politicking or reflect the type of cross-party compromise rarely seen in the assembly hall. Promises to ensure women’s representation do not translate into changes in women’s lives because too often the implementation of laws and measures protecting women’s rights are simply not in place. But this powerful committee can move beyond political promises in its ability to make laws easier to enforce or pass a gender equality law more quickly. Ireland’s broad equality legislation, for example, has been a model for other countries on issues such as allowing women to challenge hiring practices that appear to discriminate against them, a provision that is absent from Turkey’s labor laws.

Taking the local lead
With March 29 local elections on the horizon, last week Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the AK Party aimed to fill a third of the country’s city council seats with women. But his word has pretty low value: He and his party have already failed to follow through on their decision to name women to 15 percent of the AKP’s mayoral candidates.

KADER’s Ankara branch director İlknur Üstün demanded on Tuesday that local municipalities establish commissions on gender equality as well. "This would help local services organize with a focus on gender," Üstün said.

Much of the progress by Turkish women on equality emanates from local women’s groups and the changes they have brought about in their communities, a leading women’s rights advocate Pınar İlkkaracan told me a few months ago. In Canakkale, where women have mobilized the local power structure, the city "checks with its women’s group before building a road," she said. İlkkaracan recalled a husband who burst into a meeting of a local Anatolian women’s group to thank them for helping his wife become a better wife and mother. "We have a much better sex life nowÉ and I’ve told all my friends to send their wives to these workshops too," she recalled him saying.

It’s not hard to imagine a similar effect taking hold of men all over Turkey as women begin to lend greater voice to their communities.