WUNRN
Aljazeera Center for Studies
http://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2014/02/201429104351767777.htm
Women’s Rights & Social
Problems in Turkey
|
A Turkish woman
casts her vote in a referendum on changes to the constitution that was
crafted in the wake of Turkey's 1980 military coup, in Istanbul, Turkey [AP
Photo] |
Esra Hatipoglu – 09 February 2014
Abstract |
INTRODUCTION
The issue of women’s rights and social problems in Turkey can be looked at from
different angles. From one anagle, some may choose to base their
arguments on the past and present legal and institutional framework; from
another angle, some may choose to focus on the social and private life and try
to analyse the role and the status of woman in her family; or some may like to
merge the two perspectives and try to give a broad overview of the situation.
This report will look at both angles and will also attempt to look at it from a
third angle. Firstly, it will focus on the legal, institutional and
political developments from a historical perspective and secondly it will
examine the current issues and problems. With the existence of different
concerns of urban and rural women and women of different social classes, ethnic
communities etc., this report aims to provide a general overview of the current
situation in Turkey.
THE LEGAL, INSTITUTIONAL & POLITICAL
DEVELOPMENTS FROM A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
With the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, women’s equality in the
public sphere became more or less a national policy, in which many laws were
changed, new laws were adopted, and women were encouraged to get involved in
professional life, political life etc.
In 1926, the new Civil Code (from
Switzerland) gave women a status of “person” and therefore, equal rights to men
in some aspects (including marriage, divorce, inheritance etc.) was adopted. It
was under these new changes that religious and polygamous marriages were
banned. The right to vote in local elections was given to women in 1930, and
full suffrage was adopted in 1934. There were also other social
developments for women during the 1930s. For instance, Keriman Halis became the
first Turkish lady who attended the international beauty contest that took
place in Brussels in 1932. Sabiha Gokcen-the adopted daughter of Ataturk-became
Turkey’s first woman combat pilot. (1)
It can aslo be argued, however, that despite
all these developments, the private lives of women in Turkey did not change
much. These changes improved the lives of only a small group of women in the
public sphere. Nonetheless, such criticims should not allow us to undermine the
legal, institutional and political reforms of the period concerned because it
is on that foundation that later improvements in women’s rights in Turkey were developed.
With this historical background in mind, we
can argue that it was not until the 1980s that women’s issues were discussed so
openly in the public. An important factor was the signing of the Convention to
Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) by Turkey in 1985.
By signing the CEDAW that was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979,
Turkey committed itself to undertaking some measures to end
discrimination against women in all forms. (2)
In 1989, the first Women’s Research and
Education Center opened at Istanbul University. This was later followed by the
opening of some more centres including the Research and Implementation Center
on the Problems of Women at Ankara University, the Research and
Implementation Center for the Employment of Women at Marmara University and the
Women’s Research and Implementation Center at Cukurova University. (3) The
year 1993 was another symbolic turning point for Turkey; for the first time a
Turkish woman named Tansu Ciller from the True Path Party, became the prime
minister of Turkey.
Furthermore in 1998, Turkey adopted the
Family Protection Law (Law no: 4320). The Law was amended in 2007, and its
scope was enhanced by the Law to Protect Family and Prevent Violence against
Women (Law no:6284), that entered into force in March 2012. Despite its
shortcomings, (exlusion of divorced and unmarried women), the Family Protection
Law, was important in providing “a protection system if a spouse or child or
another member of the family living under the same roof is subject to
abuse”. (4)
During the first years of the AKP government,
some reforms were made in Turkish legislation, due to the efforts of
women’s rights lobbies that continued since the 1980s and the campaign by
126 women groups from all around the country in 2001. The reform of the penal
code to recognise women as “individuals”, changes regarding sexual crime as
“crime against an individual”, laws criminalizing sexual harassment, marital
rape, laws that increased punishments (imposing life sentences) for honour
killings or changes that abolished the discrimination applied to unmarried
women in many cases, could be regarded as examples of such reforms.(5) The
State shall have the obligation to ensure that equality exists in practice, the
provision into the Constitution in 2004 and the signing of the Council of
Europe “Convention on Preventing and Combating the Violence against Women and
Domestic Violence” by Turkey (with the vision of Zero Tolerance for Violence)
in May 2011. These are undoubtedly important steps for the legal and
institutional developments of women’s rights in Turkey. (6)
A LONG ROAD TO GO
Despite the existence of some reforms
concerning the status of women in Turkey during the AKP period, there are still
some important issues that made advocates of women’s rights criticise the
government seriously. The announcement of Prime Minister Erdogan that all
Turkish women should have three children and that the AKP would draft a law
that would ban abortion outright or the turning of the State Ministry
Responsible for Women’s Affairs into Ministry of Family and Social Affairs in
2012 can be regarded as various examples of those issues. In one of Erdogan’s
speeches in 2010 about the equality of men and women, he clearly stated that
“Women are women and men are men. Is it possible for them to be equal?” (7)
However, Turkish women in general still
continue to face some problems such as low literacy rates, low labour force,
political and educational participation, domestic violence and honour killings
etc.
Even when we compare Turkey’s rankings with
other countries in the world in terms of gender gap, the statistical data are
not promising. Acccording to the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report
2013, Turkey ranks 120 out of 136 countries (8) and in the 2012 UNDP Global
Gender Inequality Index, Turkey ranks 90. (9)
In terms of literacy rates, according to the
Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) illiteracy figures, 2.3 million of the
2.8 million of people who are illiterate are women. (846 thousand women whose
literacy status is not known were not included into the statistics). (10) From
these figures, it is not very difficult to understand the great disparity
between men and women in Turkey.
In terms of labour force, according to the
Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) figures of 2012, women’s employment
rate is still low at 29.5% and with an unemployment rate of 10.8%, (11)despite
the fact that Turkish businesswomen now have more access to funding
through banks and the support of NGOs in terms of microfinance credits.
In the political sphere, women are still
under-represented. In the general elections of 2011, 79 women parliamentarians
entered into parliament. Currently there is only one woman minister - the
Minister of Family and Social Affairs - in the cabinet. In the local elections
that took place in March 2009, only 27 out of 2948 mayors who were elected and
1340 out of 31790 members of municipal councils were women. (12)
Apart from low literacy rates, labour force
and political participation, there are still other issues related to women in
Turkey that must also be taken into consideration. The first issues is domestic
violence. According to the report entitled “Domestic Violence Against Women in
Turkey” that was published in January 2009, 42% of Turkish women experienced domestic
violence in their lifetimes and 11-29% of married women experienced serious
physical violence from their husbands. (13) In
addition, according to the Ministry of Justice figures (in 2009), the number of
Turkish women who were murdered increased dramatically starting from 66 in
2002, reaching to 953 in the first seven months of 2009. (14)
Although the Law on Municipalities requires
each municipality with 50,000 or more residents to have one shelter for women
and children, according to the Ministry of Family and Social Affairs figures
(in June 2013), there are only 120 women shelters in 79 cities (87
attached to the Ministry, 32 to local authorities and 1 to an NGO). (15) According
to the EU standards, one shelter should be opened per 7,500 people. (16)
The mortality rate in maternal delivery is
another issue of concern. According to the Ministry of Health figures (in
2011), the mortality rate of mothers still stand at 15.5%, which is very high
when compared with other developed countries. (17) Early
and mostly arranged marriages, frequent and early pregnancies are also
important problems that are still seriously affecting women Turkey, especially
those in rural areas. Despite the legal improvements, honour killings are still
being witnessed and continue to seriously threaten women’s lives in the Eastern
and South-Eastern part of Turkey.
CONCLUSION
With the accelerating role of the EU in the
accession process, starting from the end of the 1990s, Turkey has made some
progress in the establishment of the legal framework for the improvement of
human rights. With Ataturk’s reforms concerning women’s rights on which the
recent reforms were based, we can discuss a partial success in developing
further. It is only a partial success because Turkish women still continue to
have various problems ranging from domestic violence, to honour killings, from
low participation in the labour force to low participation in the political
sphere etc., in addditon to the existence of other more specific problems
depending on their social status, geographical location, ethnic origin etc. The
underlining idea here is the fact that “human rights” issues in general and
“women’s rights” issues in particular require more time and a real social and
mental transformation. For this to happen, legal changes can only be regarded
as the first steps. Implementation which needs the “political will” as its core
is the real step that must be taken seriously.
_________________________________________________
*Esra Hatipoglu, is a Professor at the Department of Public
Administration (in French), at Marmara University, ?stanbul.
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Endnotes
(1) J.B White (2003), “State Feminism, Modernization, and
the Turkish Republican Woman”, NWSA Journal, Vol:15/3, p.151;
(2) The Convention on the Elimination of all
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW),http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/
(3) N. Arat(1996), “Women’s Studies in
Turkey”, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol:24/1-2, pp.404-406.
(4) Family Protection Law, http://www.justice.gov.tr/basiclaws/familiy_%20protection.pdf;
(5) Women for Women’s Human Rights-The
Campaign for Full Gender Equality in the Civil Code,http://www.wwhr.org/category/the-campaign-for-full-gender-equality-in-the-civil-code
(6) Council of Europe Convention on preventing
and combating violence against women and domestic violence
CETS No.: 210, http://www.conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/QueVoulezVous.asp?CL=ENG&NT=210
(7) Meeting of the Prime Minister Erdogan with
Women’s NGO Representatives, July 2010.
(8) World Economic Forum in Global Gender Gap
Report 2013,http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GGGR13/GGGR_CountryProfiles_2013.pdf
(9) 2012 UNDP Global Gender Inequality
Index, http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/68606.html
(10) Turkish Statistical Institute
(TurkStat), 2012, www.tuik.gov.tr/IcerikGetir.do?istab_id=5
(11) Turkish Statistical Institute
(TurkStat), 2012, http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=13458
(12) F.?ahin (2012), “Women Rights in
Turkey”, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Vol:11/1, pp.44-45.
(13) Domestic Violence Against Women in
Turkey, Turkish Prime Ministry, Directorate General on the Status of Women,
January 2009, http://www.hips.hacettepe.edu.tr/eng/dokumanlar/2008-TDVAW_Main_Report.pdf
(14) Ministry of Justice Figures,
2009, http://www.psikiyatri.org.tr/presses.aspx?press=270&type=24
(15) Ministry of Family and Social Affairs,
2013, http://gundem.milliyet.com.tr/siginmaevleri-magdurlara-yetisemiyo/gundem/detay/1754620/default.htm
(16) K.Sevinç (2012), “Gender Equality and
the EU’s Transformational Power in Turkey”, Social Europe Journal,http://www.social-europe.eu/2012/11/gender-equality-and-the-eus-transformational-power-in-turkey/
(17) Ministry of Health, 2011, http://sbu.saglik.gov.tr/Ekutuphane/kitaplar/siy_2011.pdf