Tied Up in Knots

Eurasianet's Nicholas Birch has a great piece up about an initiative in Turkey to get headscarved women on the ballot for the upcoming parliamentary elections. From his article:

A woman's group is stirring controversy in Turkey with a campaign to elect headscarf-wearing women to parliament. Some of the fiercest opposition to the initiative is coming not from secularists, but from religious conservatives.

With just over two months to go before Turkey’s parliamentary balloting, the country’s political leaders are starting to assemble party lists of candidates. The number of seats any given party wins is determined by the percentage of the vote it receives. The higher an individual candidate is on a party list, then, the better the odds of that person becoming a MP.

Turkish women's groups have been traditionally divided along ideological lines. But they are uniting behind the initiative, launched in March by a non-partisan group called Women Meet Halfway, to have women who wear headscarves placed high enough up on party lists so that they stand a decent chance of being elected.

"No headscarves, no vote," shouted sixty-odd women who gathered outside the parliament building in Ankara on April 8. "As it stands, our democracy is half-baked", said the group's spokeswoman, Nesrin Semiz. "Two-thirds of Turkish women cover their heads. Not one of them has a seat in parliament."

The campaign is generating an ambiguous reaction from an electoral constituency that, at least at first glance, would appear to be a natural ally: religiously conservative men.

The full article can be found here.

Turkey's political parties released their candidate lists today. Hurriyet takes a look at how women fared on the lists here. In the end, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) only nominated one headscarved candidate, placing her at the bottom of the candidates list, which means it's not very likely she'll get voted into parliament.

A Thick Glass Ceiling

Turkey's State Personnel Department has just released figures detailing the participation (or lack thereof) of women in the country's bureaucracy. It's not a pretty picture. From a report in Today's Zaman:

All undersecretaries in Turkish ministries are male. Out of 79 deputy undersecretaries, only 2 are female. Out of 96 director generals in Turkish ministries, 91 are male. All of the 175 governors in Turkey are male. Out of 450 deputy governors, 12 are female. Out of 8,284 high level bureaucrats, 7,713 are male while only 571 seats are taken by female public servants.

Out of 989 district governors, 19 are female.

The full article -- which, true to the paper's ideological leanings, blames the imbalance on Turkey's ongoing headscarf ban -- is here. Turkey, in recent years, has consistently ranked very low in various indexes that measure the level of female participation in political and economic life. Last year's World Economic Forum Gender Gap report gave Turkey a dismal review, ranking the country 129th out of 134 countries (read Turkey's profile here (pdf)).

And while the European Union's most recent progress report on Turkey was seen as mild compared to previous years, it was very forceful in its criticism of the country's recent record on gender equality (you can read it here (pdf -- go to page 22 for the relevant section)).

The Turkish Connection

There's a lot of talk these days about Turkey's growing influence and reputation in the Arab and Muslim worlds. One place where this can be seen very clearly is in Gokce, a dirt-poor village near Turkey's border with Syria. In the last year, the Arabic-speaking village's men -- many of whom still practice polygamy -- have started looking for second wives online, where, thanks to Turkey’s growing clout and visibility in the Middle East, Turkish bride surfers are suddenly seen as quite a catch by women in the region.

For a number of reasons, the villagers have had particular success in luring Moroccan women to Gokce. From a recent Eurasianet piece of mine about the village and its online bride hunters:

To get a sense of how modern technology can be put to use in the service of ancient tradition, one might want to consider a visit to the Yildirim internet cafe in Gokce, a small, poor and dusty village near Turkey’s southern border with Syria.

When Hasip Yildirim, a 34-year-old former truck driver, opened the cafe two years ago, he imagined it would be a place for local children to play video games and surf the web. Little did he know it would become Gokce’s lonely hearts’ club, although with a somewhat unsavory twist.

Many of the men in Gokce (pronounced "Gohk-che") practice polygamy, which, although officially outlawed in 1926, endures throughout Turkey’s impoverished and predominantly-rural southeast.

In the past, the village’s Arabic-speaking men used to hop across the border to find a second wife in Syria. But the arrival of the internet in the village has changed that. Since Yildirim opened his cafe two years ago, Gokce’s men have started looking for wives online, where -- thanks to Turkey’s growing clout and visibility in the Middle East -- Turkish bride surfers are suddenly seen as quite a catch by women in the region.

"Everyone’s coming to the internet cafe now to find a wife," said cafe-owner Yildirim, speaking inside his fluorescent-lit, one-room business, which has some 20 computer terminals. "Sometimes, there’s no space to sit down."

Locals have zeroed in on Morocco since its citizens can come to Turkey without a visa. In the last year, some 10 Moroccan brides -- all second wives, including a 45-year-old who married a man 30 years her senior -- have come to Gokce, population 3,200. More than a dozen more are expected to arrive in the coming year.

"Everybody wants a Moroccan bride now," said Yildirim. He now acts as a kind of virtual matchmaker, scouting out potential Moroccan wives on an Arabic chat website called Habibti.com ("habibti" is the feminine version of "my dear" in Arabic).

"The Moroccans think Turkey has prestige, that it’s a strong country. They also trust Turkey -- they know it’s a Muslim country and that we pray and read the Koran," Yildirim said. "They don’t ask if we are rich or poor, or what we eat. The first question they ask is if we are Muslim or not."

Issam Moussaoui, executive director of the Democratic Association of Moroccan Women, a women’s rights organization based in Casablanca, says a poor economy and little access to jobs have forced many Moroccan women to look to marriage abroad -- particularly in Europe -- as a way out of enduring poverty.

For some Moroccan women, being a second wife might not sound so strange. Polygamy in Morocco was banned only in 2004.

Meanwhile, after decades of not being involved in the Middle East, Turkey’s stock in the region is rising. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s harsh criticism of Israel’s attack on Gaza earlier this year endeared Turkey to many in the Arab world, while, in recent years, several Turkish soap operas -- dubbed into Arabic -- have become hits across the Middle East, further reintroducing the country to the region.

"Moroccans know a lot more about Turkey now," said Moussaoui, speaking by telephone from Casablanca. "Especially now with the television shows, people know Turkey a lot more. A lot of women watch these shows daily. They know a lot about Turkish culture and that Turkish men [seem] more romantic than other ones."

You can read the whole article here.

(photo -- Hasip Yildirim, owner of an internet cafe in Gokce, a village in Turkey where local men are going online to find Arabic-speaking second wives. Photo by Yigal Schleifer.)

For Turkey, A Domestic Violence Case with International Implications

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has issued a historic ruling in a case brought forth by a Turkish woman whose mother was killed by her abusive ex-husband. From the Wall Street Journal's article about the court's ruling:

The case is a landmark ruling for Europe. For the first time, it classifies such cases as gender discrimination, giving the Strasbourg court jurisdiction in cases of domestic violence.

Andrea Coombers, legal practice director at the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights in London, said describing gender-based violence as discrimination "is what the rest of the world has thought for at least a decade. It is a significant step in the right direction by the European Union."

Mesut Bestas, the lawyer for Ms. Opuz, added: "European legislation on freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and right to life is clear, but when it comes to the issue of women's rights, the legal framework is murky. ... This trial begins to shed light on that murkiness."

Nahide Opuz, a woman living in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, brought her case to the court in Strasbourg, France, after exhausting avenues in Turkey. As a member of the Council of Europe, Turkey is subject to the Council's human-rights court.

Ms. Opuz, now in hiding, started complaining to Turkish police in 1995 that her stepfather and his son -- her husband -- repeatedly assaulted and threatened her and her mother.

Her husband, Huseyin Opuz, was convicted of trying to run over Ms. Opuz and her mother in a car, but his three-month sentence was later commuted to a fine. Mr. Opuz was also fined for stabbing his wife in 2001.

On March 11, 2002, Mr. Opuz shot and killed his mother-in-law as she and her daughter were loading furniture on a truck to flee the area. He was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but the sentence was reduced. He was freed from jail having served several years, taking into account that the offense was a result of "provocation by the deceased."

On Thursday, a judge in Strasbourg demanded the Turkish state pay Ms. Opuz €30,000 ($41,700) in damages. The court ruling criticized "the overall unresponsiveness of the judicial system and impunity enjoyed by the aggressors" in Turkey.

(Take a look at this Bianet article for a good rundown on the history of Opuz's case.)

Turkey's record on dealing with domestic violence has been fairly dismal. Statistics have shown that nearly 50 percent of Turkish women have faced some from of family violence. There is a severe lack of shelters for abused women and the judiciary and police often don't take seriously the complaints made by threatened women. For some background on the issue, take a look at this article I wrote several years back. Unfortunately, the information is essentially still up-to-date.

A (Struggling) League of Their Own

Today’s New York Times has an article of mine about the challenges facing a new Turkish women’s football/soccer league. From the article:

On a recent cold, gray Sunday, two Turkish premier league soccer teams enthusiastically ran onto the field of a small stadium on the outskirts of Istanbul.

Turks are soccer mad, with games regularly attended by tens of thousands of boisterous fans. But at this game, between host Kartalspor and Ankara’s Gazi Universitesispor, the 22 players on the field outnumbered the people shivering in the stands.

The weather was probably not to blame for the poor attendance; it was more likely because of who was playing. The two teams are part of Turkey’s new women’s soccer league, and although Turks may be soccer fanatics, there is a deep ambivalence in this socially conservative, predominantly Muslim society about women playing the game.
Halfway through its 18-game inaugural season, the league has met a combination of indifference, curiosity and occasional hostility.

“Football is seen as a man’s game in Turkey,” said Nurper Ozbar, 30, the coach of Marmara Universitesispor, the top team in the second division of the league, which also has two youth divisions.

“We’ve had men come to watch our practices and yell at our players: ‘What are you doing here? You should be at home, cooking!’ ” said Ozbar, one of the few women accredited as a soccer coach in Turkey, and the only one in Istanbul. “It’s going to take time to change this.”

You can read the rest of the article here.

(photo: Members of Istanbul's Kartalspor, one of the teams in a new Turkish women's football league. By Yigal Schleifer)