Selma Atabek, a women’s rights activist, has said violence against women is the most important problem in Turkey and that it affects women from all walks of life.
“In the past, we thought that it happens only to women in lower socioeconomic strata. But this is not the case. Women from all walks of life face violence,” she said.
Many studies show that nearly one in two women suffer violence at least once in their lifetime. A recent study has shown that 42 percent of Turkish women have been victims of physical or sexual violence by a male relative or spouse at least once in their lives. The figures are the result of the yearlong National Research Project on Domestic Violence Against Women in Turkey, funded by the European Union.
The results are not encouraging in European countries, either. In the United Kingdom, one woman dies every three days as a result of domestic violence. In the Netherlands, one-fifth of all women have been subjected to violence by a partner or ex-partner.
In an interview with Monday Talk, Atabek elaborated on the issue and told us about the development of the women’s movement in Turkey, with anecdotes from her own personal experience. We spoke at the Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation, which was founded in celebration of March 8, International Women’s Day, in 1990.
You have been part of the women’s movement in Turkey since the mid-1970s. How do you think the movement has evolved since then?
Before 1980, the women’s movement was mostly political. We were working in the women’s branches within political movements. After the chaotic years of the ‘70s, we sat down and started to think about what we were doing and why we were doing it. In the ‘80s, the women’s movement woke up to new developments.
What were these new developments?
We started to learn about feminism. In political movements, we had little knowledge about feminism. Following the 1980 military coup, politics entered a time of stalemate, but the women’s movement was active. We started to meet active people — such as Şirin Tekeli, who was a pioneering academic — in the area of feminism. And we found that women’s problems were subject matter apart from the class struggle. Before we had a formula and it was: Like all other problems, women’s problems will disappear when the class struggle sees success. In the late ‘80s, activist women were involved in women’s rights campaigns that were frequent and put women’s issues in the spotlight.
What kind of campaigns were they?
We carried out protests against violence against women. We questioned everything then.
Such as?
With the largely informal and heterogeneous feminist movement, we questioned the role of family, for example. The expectation that women had to be chaste and modest began to be challenged. We protested domestic violence with the participation of many women. We started the first “Purple Needle” campaign, in which needles with purple heads were distributed on the streets against sexual harassment. We even questioned our marriages. We realized that we had restricted ourselves and had a conservative way of life. We discovered our right to be on the streets, not just during the day, but also at night.
Are you married?
I’ve been married for 30 years. Some of us had our husbands involved in the process and evolved together. My husband has been in the process with me. We learned things together. We were active in organizing protests and campaigns, plus educational activities involving men.
Could you tell us about a campaign that was personally important for you?
Yes! I was involved in a mass divorce protest in which I got a divorce to oppose the difficult process of getting a divorce. It was not easy to get a divorce for women then. We wanted to send the message that we do not get permission from the state when we make the decision to get married and we won’t when we want to get a divorce. There was a period when some government officials were opposed to the liberal women’s movement. For example, one of them, Cemil Çicek, had said that flirting is no different than adultery. A ministry was established related to women and family issues, and they had statistics trying to link the rise of divorce in the society to women’s work outside of the home. We protested all of these unfounded ideas.
Was that period a golden age for the women’s movement?
It was. For me, it was a personal renaissance. We had great spirit. We had great enthusiasm. We worked with women on the ground. We protested many discriminatory acts and laws against women in Turkey. Now there are more projects and academic research regarding the issue. We also worked on drafting laws to change the secondary status of women in the family. We were able have Parliament pass a law on the equal distribution of property between husband and wife but we had an unexpected result at the last minute.
Would you tell us more about that?
The law passed but with a big flaw. Marriages done before the law went into effect were excluded from benefiting from the change. It was a last minute adjustment by the lawmakers and we had never thought about it since it was clear to us that a lot of marriages were making women slaves in the family because of their economic dependency.
What is the most persistent problem facing women in Turkey?
The most important problem relates to the safety of women. It is violence against women and honor crimes. We talk about religious revivalism in Turkey, and I wonder where it is, because religion is about making people’s lives better. Imams should tell the masses in mosques tens, hundreds and thousands of times that it is a cruel crime to kill women in the name of honor. The head of the Religious Affairs Directorate should talk about this on television every day. If not, I question the earnestness of this religiosity.
Speaking of religion, there seems to be a communication gap between religious women’s rights defenders, particularly the women who wear the headscarf, and feminists. Do you agree?
Yes, there is a communication gap, because feminists are pro-freedom and wearing a headscarf brings many restrictions for women.
Don’t you think that the feminist movement can work with religious women’s rights defenders toward removing some of those restrictions, such as access to higher education?
I’ve always defended removing restrictions in that regard. There should not have been a higher education ban on women who wear headscarves. This is outright discrimination against women. Men, who might have even more fanatic religious views but do not display it, can have access to all kinds of education. And the issue has grown to be political because of the ban on the headscarf at universities, and the headscarf has become a political symbol as a result.
Could the feminist movement emphasize, together with headscarved women, the fact that the style of one’s clothes is not the sole thing people should pay attention to in public life?
Feminists never excluded headscarved activist women.
Have they been included?
They are inspired by feminism and talk about, for example, why their prayer areas are secondary to the men’s areas in mosques. They are the only ones who can engage in those kinds of discussions and take a stance. It is distant subject matter to me.
Don’t you think the “other side” would think of the same thing for some of the feminist causes and not sympathize with them?
I look back and think that as feminists, a religiously conservative lifestyle was something that we were not sympathizing with at all. Now religious conservatism is on the rise and their voices are heard. There are sways and swings in the society. There will be balance in the end. People eventually will meet in the middle and find consensus.
Are you hopeful about the future?
Sometimes I feel dismay, sometimes hope. I am coming from a generation that sacrificed its personal interests and desires for ideals that we thought would make Turkey a better place to live. Because of that, I wish future generations would not have to go through a similar experience. And I see indications in that regard. For example, I see children from the less developed eastern and southeastern parts of Turkey and they are from low-income families. They speak on television expressing their views on issues and talk about their future plans when asked by reporters. They have self-confidence. Their families treat them better than in the past. They have more freedom. That gives me hope.
You mentioned that you have taken many field trips in Anatolia. Do you have any memorable stories from those trips?
I was so disturbed on some of our field trips because we were not able to communicate with women, since we did not know Kurdish and they did not know Turkish. Nobody was able to reach them at the time through television or radio. Why shouldn’t there be one channel that these women would be able to understand? I was so dismayed then. But, in general, I always came back to İstanbul with hope, because if you do make the effort to touch the lives of those people positively, they are always receptive.
You rate violence against women as the most important problem in Turkey. Does it happen only to women from lower socioeconomic levels?
Not at all. In the past we thought so. But it is not the case. Women from all walks of life face violence. I personally know people from my own social network with such experiences.
What would you say are the other most important problems facing women in Turkey?
Economic dependency and not having access to education. Over the years, I have realized that women have superior qualities. Women do not have a pro-status quo approach like men. Look at the crowds who immigrated to the city from villages. You see men spitting on the streets, but not women. Women’s adaptation to their environment is much better than men. If women are given a chance, they would make the world a better place to live. At least, we would not have those dreadful cockfights in the world!
Today’s Zaman