Women's Rights Defender İlkkaracan: We Insist on Our Requests

The President of the Association for New Solutions on Women's Human Rights, Pınar İlkkaracan, criticized the poor outcome of the meeting with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Dolmabahçe Palace on the European banks of the Bosporus in Istanbul on Sunday (18 July). "We are determined on our demands and we will continue to voice them", she said.

İlkkaracan spoke to bianet about the meeting organized in the scope of the "National Unity and Brotherhood" project:

"Every single woman brought their concerns and demands over and the Prime Minister did not interrupt anybody. In a subsequent 90-minute speech, he responded to 90 percent of the contributions and answered all requests by saying 'I cannot do that'".

"I was full of hope when I went to the meeting to be honest but I was disappointed", İlkkaracan said. "I went to the meeting with the hope that the democratic initiative has to advance. I did not expect this outcome. The Prime Minister said 'no' to the entire number of requests. But we are determined to voice our demands continuously and insistingly".

Education in mother tongue still a sensitive issue

İlkkaracan voiced the following four demands in the meeting:

* If the Prime Minister is sincere about the issue of a democratic opening, he should show this by decreasing the election threshold. It can be discussed later on whether the election threshold goes down to 3, 5 or 7 percent.

* An opportunity was missed during the process of the constitutional amendments. It would have been a big step forward if the Constitution had been based on a social consensus. The Prime Minister said in his speech that they "broke taboos". Yet, new norms could have been established in the process of the constitutional amendments. You need to establish new norms in order to break taboos, this was not done.

* Another taboo topic is education in the mother tongue. I voiced our demand for education in the mother tongue before the Prime Minister but he started arguing with me. I said that this has been implemented in the federal states of Germany and he cut me short, saying, "There is nothing like that in Germany, tell the truth to the people here. That is what I am demanding from Merkel". If the Prime Minister demands education in their mother tongue for Turkish people living in Germany, he should provide the same to Kurdish people in Turkey.

* Regarding the request for translators for Kurdish speaking women in eastern and south-eastern Turkey, the Prime Minister replied, "This has been sorted out". Yes, permission for the translators has been issued but the women cannot reach them. This does not solve the problem.

"Prime Minister did not consider our suggestions"

Zozan Özgökçe from the Van Women Association (VAKAD) criticized that the suggestions put forward by the women were not considered by PM Erdoğan: "The Prime Minister did not take our proposals into account but put us into place with an attitude of omniscience. I brought my hopes to the meeting and left without them".

Hülya Gülbahar from the Constitutional Women's Platform told bianet, "The Prime Minister clearly declined all proposals including the requests related to education in the mother tongue, the women quota and the election threshold. [...] I do not see any reason to remain hopeful after this meeting".

Bektaş: Positive outcome

The President of the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB), Aynur Bektaş, assessed the meeting in a positive light:

"The Prime Minister listened to about 80 women. The meeting lasted for seven hours. I congratulate the Prime Minister on this. He also spoke about mothers and said that women have a special contribution to make to the opening process because of this special situation. The women's representatives in the meeting were united in one single issue which was their support for the democratic opening. I think the meeting had a positive outcome. One woman said 'I wish you had done the democratic opening together with us' and I agree with that. The Prime Minister's success in his own party stems from the support of women. Women would have been a huge influence in the opening process as well", Bektaş said and concluded, "We all submitted our files to the Prime Minister. I hope that the related ministers will pay attention to our requests". (SP/VK)