TURKEY tr-politics
Bittersweet poll victory for women
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News | 6/13/2011 12:00:00 AM | ERİSA DAUTAJ ŞENERDEM
The increase in the number of female members of Parliament following Sunday’s election is good news, but not sufficient to ensure strong political representation for women, according to women’s rights activists.
The increase in the number of female members of Parliament following Sunday’s election is good news, but not sufficient to ensure strong political representation for women, according to women’s rights activists.
“The number of female deputies has increased, but it is not enough. [Female representation] has not even approached 25 percent of the total number of deputies,” Canan Güllü, the chairwoman of the Turkish Women’s Associations Federation, or TKDF, told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview Monday.
Sunday’s polls saw 78 women elected to represent the Turkish people in the new Parliament, where they will comprise 14.1 percent of the total number of deputies. In the previous Parliament, 50 deputies were women.
“[Seventy-eight] is an insufficient figure, considering that there are more women than men in Turkey. Yet this increase indicates an improvement [of the present situation],” Güllü said. She added, however, that the new Parliament still lacked women from civil-society organizations who have a background in defending women’s rights.
“There are very few female deputies who are competent in women’s issues,” the TKDF chairwoman said.
Because of this, Güllü said, civil-society organizations have to start once again to explain women’s concerns to the new deputies, slowing down the process of enacting reforms. “Had there been more women activists in the Parliament, they would have immediately started working to address women’s issues,” she said.
“Female constituents are not being sufficiently represented in Parliament,” Gülden Türktan, the chairwoman of Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey, or KAGİDER, told the Daily News in an interview Monday. She said KAGİDER would immediately start working to change this situation for the local elections set to be held in 2013.
Forty-five of the new female deputies were elected from the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, 19 were elected from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and three were elected from the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP. Eleven women were elected as independent candidates supported by a bloc led by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP.
The increase in the number of female parliamentary deputies was not characterized by an increase in the number of women with free and democratic views, according to Dilek Sarılı, the chairwoman of the University Graduate Women Association. There are two main “faces” of women in Turkey: the democratic women, who defend Western values, and the more party-driven ones, Sarılı told the Daily News in a phone interview Monday. “Both [groups] must be active in politics,” she said.
Women in Turkey need to participate more in the country’s political life at every level, “starting with membership and promotions within parties, ” Sarılı said.