From the Bosphorus: Straight - Women into politics but how?

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan likely won few points with women over his recent remarks about not believing in male-female equality, comments we’ve already said have unfortunate implications for Turkish society. Unsurprisingly, opposition parties are trying to milk some political capital out of the statement, positioning themselves as champions of women’s rights ahead of the 2011 general elections.

In a way, though, one of the main arguments the opposition has been making to that end in fact supports one of the prime minister’s points.

Speaking to a group of women earlier this month about the government’s democratic initiative, Erdoğan said: “I don’t believe in the equality of men and women; women and men are different, complementary.”

That different perspective is what main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu invited into the political arena when he urged more women to enter politics, promising they would be treated better than they had been in the past.

While we at the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review strongly reject the prime minister’s assertion that men and women are not equal, we also believe that they do bring different perspectives to the table – and that a country deadlocked on so many crucial issues can use as many fresh ideas and voices as it can get.

Both Kılıçdaroğlu’s Republican People’s Party, or CHP, and Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, have a long way to go when it comes to achieving equal representation – less than 10 percent of each party’s deputies in Parliament are women, with the CHP having a slight lead in this regard.

Gender-based quotas in elections would boost the number of women making crucial decisions for the country, though women’s groups are divided on the idea, with some supporting it and others seeing it as an unhealthy form of tokenism. (Most political parties have quotas for their own internal bodies, though they are not required by law.)

It’s not just Parliament where women are underrepresented either. According to recent figures from the State Personnel Department, none of the undersecretaries in Turkish ministries, and only two of the deputy undersecretaries, are women. The governorships might as well be a boys’ club too: no girls allowed.

Changing the cultural norms and economic disadvantages that hold many women back from broader political participation won’t be any easy task. But from a country that prides itself on giving Turkish women the vote before their French, Spanish and Italian counterparts, we should expect nothing less.