AKP Disregarded Erdoğan’s Advice on Women’s Quota

Speaking at the panel were Saime Ülfet Taylı Taş, feminist candidate for Beyoğlu mayor, Gülnur Savran, Asuman Türkün, Ece Kocabıçak, lawyer Fethiye Çetin, Hülya Gülbahar, president of the Association for the Support and Education of Women Candidates (KA-DER), Nurcan Özkaplan, sociologist Nükhet Sirman, sociologist Nazan Üstündağ, Serpil Çakır, Yeşim Başaran, Hanım Tosun, Bahar Çelik, Esen Özdemir, Nazan Moroğlu.

Taylı Taş told bianet about her election campaign in Beyoğlu, hanging up posters and speaking to the local residents and traders in the neighbourhoods of Tarlabaşı and Okmeydan.

Gülbahar spoke about the women’s agenda in relation to the local elections. Saying that living and working conditions  for women had worsened in the last three years. She added that progress made was largely just on paper, and that the women’s struggle, despite continuing with force, was regressing.

Gender Equality Committee

She pointed out that in the general elections of July 2007, 50 female MPs had entered parliament, the highest number ever, but still low, compared to the 500 male MPs. The organisation KA-DER has managed to bring a Gender Equality Committee onto the agenda.

Following the efforts of women’s rights activists and women MPs, a Gender Equality Committee (literally a “Equality for Women and Men Committee”), which is to audit laws and their implementations and suggest laws, was to be formed.

However, when put before parliament for approval, MPs of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) forced a change of name into “Equality of Opportunity Committee.”

Cross-party collaboration necessary among women

What women MPs have realised, so Gülbahar, is that they have to work together, across party lines, and this has been an achievement.

However, she also pointed out that women MPs of the AKP could not resist group decisions, while the female MPs of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) were much more active, partly because a quota had been applied in the party.

Tongue-in-cheek campaigns

Gülbahar also spoke of the past campaign of KA-DER. Before the general elections of 2007, they had shown women wearing moustaches, asking “Do you need a moustache to get into parliament?” For the upcoming local elections on 29 March, the association has prepared posters with the (male) party leaders of the three main parties, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (AKP), Devlet Bahçeli (MHP) and Deniz Baykal (CHP), arm in arm, expressing their agreement on one thing: a 50 percent quota for women.

AKP did not listen to Erdoğan

According to Gülbahar, parties showed more efforts to get more women into politics in these elections.

“The Republican People’s Party (CHP) has had more female candidates than ever. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) also made efforts, even asking the CHP to transfer any women who had not been given a place to their party. Even Prime Minister Erdoğan, who has declared that he is against quotas, had told his party that of every four candidates one should be young and one should be a woman. He even called all province party headquarters for three days, but the AKP organisation did not listen to him.” (EZÖ/AG)