Solidarity with Kurdish Women in Turkey

Solidarity with Kurdish Women in Turkey

Ongoing Violence Against Kurdish Women in Turkey
What the EU-Turkey Accession Talks Offer Women

David Morgan reports on a public meeting hosted by Lynne Featherstone MP and organised by Peace in Kurdistan Campaign that took place in the House of Commons on 30 January.

The meeting was called to discuss the practical ways that support in the UK can be improved for Kurdish women who have been in the forefront of the political struggle of the Kurds over the past 20 years and who have endured immense suffering as a result of one of the dirtiest wars of recent history. Women continue to suffer as war victims themselves, loss of family members and as displaced peoples and refugees, but they were getting organised both inside Kurdistan and in the UK. The immediate occasion for the meeting was a visit to London by Kurdish human rights lawyer, Ms Sehnaz Turan, who is based in Istanbul and works on cases of rights violations of women and Kurds. She is also a director of the EUTCC (Europe-Turkey Civic Commission), a body formed to monitor progress made on human rights inside Turkey during the accession process. Ms Turan was spending the best part of two weeks meeting women’s groups, NGOs, lawyers, politicians and others of influence to raise the profile of the situation facing Kurdish women inside Turkey and Kurdistan.

The importance of recognising the “ongoing” violence against Kurdish women was stressed by Estella Schmid, who chaired the meeting and was responsible for organising the visit on behalf of the Peace in Kurdistan campaign.

Division among the Kurdish people has historically been one of the major obstacles preventing a resolution of the Kurdish question, but Ms Schmid expressed the hope that women through campaigning in their common interest would eventually be able to unite the Kurds in the struggle for their rights.  In this regard, she commended the Kurdish Women’s Charter whose launch last year was the result of the tireless efforts of activists like Monireh Moftizadeh with support from Helena Kennedy QC; both formed part of the distinguished all-women panel of speakers.

The difficulties of raising any issue relating to the Kurds in Turkey, let alone resolving their problems, derives from the fact that Turkey was a close ally of the West in the Cold War and remains today a partner of the US and Europe as they pursue their strategic interests in the Middle East and Central Asia. The Kurdish Question was however firmly on the international agenda after the Iraq war and the opening of Turkey’s accession talks with the European Union. This moment offered new opportunities to raise the Kurdish issue.

So far changes inside Turkey have largely only been of a cosmetic nature, especially in relation to the Kurds. The recent incident in Semdinli has exposed how forces within the Turkish state were still operating in the old way as in the days of the dirty war, Ms Schmid stated.

Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP, who represents a constituency in North London with a large Kurdish population, spoke of the many abuses that Kurdish women face; the roots were social, cultural and domestic, but the culpability of state agents in sexual intimidation and rape should not be ignored. She stressed the importance of political representation pointing out her party’s support for the rights of Kurds to vote for representatives of their choice. Turkey needs to take action in this area if it is to seriously meet its obligations and adopt the Copenhagen Criteria. The MP also felt that Kurdish women in the UK should get involved in the political process and looked forward to the day when they would have a voice in the British Parliament.

Guest speaker from Istanbul Sehnaz Turan expressed her appreciation for the opportunity to talk about the real situation in Turkey today. The country was engaged in a democratisation process and the EU had been encouraging the improvement of human rights. The government had passed several harmonisation packages and made changes in its legislation, but it was evident that a lot still had to be done, stressed Ms Turan, who spoke from direct experience as a lawyer working on numerous human rights cases. There had been many changes in domestic legislation apparently sufficient for the EU to decide that accession negotiations could be started. However, in reality not enough progress had been made in respecting human rights, especially women’s rights. The dimension of discrimination against “ethnic minorities” in Turkey was still not addressed.

The legacy of the 20 year “dirty war” had left lots of suffering and the many cases brought before the ECHR testify to the numerous violations including rapes, torture and village destruction that took place particularly during the state of emergency. The ECHR had clearly ruled on several occasions that Turkish security forces had deliberately carried out these violations. Many millions of people had been displaced from their evacuated villages compounding the suffering. It was thus evident that arbitrary actions and lack of respect for the rule of law were commonplace in the country. Women were at the sharp end of this state of emergency regime in the South East. One consequence was the high rate of suicides among Kurdish women displaced to live in poor conditions in Turkish cities. Basic medical and social services were hard for them to access because many did not speak Turkish, but they were still not permitted to use their mother tongue of Kurdish.

The lack of progress on resolving the Kurdish question can be seen in a number of areas, she explained: there has been no change in the 10% voting threshold that acts as a barrier to Kurdish parties winning national representation despite having overwhelming support in the Kurdish region; broadcasting in the Kurdish language was still not allowed and provisions for education in the mother tongue remained inadequate. All this slow progress seriously impacted on the daily lives of Kurdish women.
Ms Turan declared that the destiny of Kurdish women was not to be forever victims; they had the abilities to become part of the decision making process in their country and could play a vital role in the democratisation. What they needed was first of all for more international attention to be paid to what is happening in Turkey and more active support for their cause from sympathetic people from outside the country. In a message that was aimed far wider than the attentive audience gathered at the meeting, she urged more people to visit Turkey and Kurdistan to see exactly what was taking place and what could be done to help.

In an expression of solidarity with Sehnaz, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, said that she had been taking up very similar causes in her work as a defence lawyer in the UK. For some 20 years Baroness Kennedy had acted for people who had come up against the power of the state and many of her clients had been women subjected to the same kinds of intolerable abuse as their Kurdish counterparts.

Noted for her interests in Irish, Palestinian, asylum and many political rights cases, Ms Kennedy had only relatively recently become aware of the history and experiences of the Kurdish struggle through contact with refugee clients, through the KHRP and through other lawyers with whom she was working.
Like other speakers, she recognised the double burden borne by women in Kurdistan, as women and as Kurds. Linked in to this was her main argument that the law reform by itself will not make any real difference until changes are actively embraced by the legal and political professionals who run the institutions. This was true everywhere, in Turkey as much as the UK.

In an inspiring and thoughtful address, Baroness Kennedy, author of books such as Eve Was Framed and an experienced broadcaster, went on to define human rights law as “a new language that can enable us to develop relationships of respect for one another”. Human rights were not just an issue for the state or the passing of laws, but were a code for living created out of how we relate to each other as human beings. The relevance of this for the situation of Turkey, where the Kurds are still struggling for basic recognition, was all too apparent.

She said the immediate opportunity for initiating change in the country while it remained outside the European Union needed to be seized on, for once Turkey becomes part of the EU, our ability to hold its leaders to account would be lost. The process of EU-Turkey negotiations offered a crucial “window of opportunity”, she stated, but strongly emphasised that we must not allow Turkey entry until there is a “genuine shift in the country”. This needed what she described as a “reality shift”, not simply the formal enactment of reform legislation which alone was not making any difference to the lives of the people.

Urging increased activism by women to influence changes in both the law and popular attitudes, Baroness Kennedy said that women occupied a position in relation to power and the state that was representative of other groups in society who were excluded. She concluded with a pledge of her support to the Kurdish women, while advising the more systematic compilation of data and statistics on abuses as evidence to enable the issues to be raised in Parliament and other political forums in Europe. Her remarks on the value of evidence were echoed by other speakers at the meeting.

Margaret Owen, a barrister and adviser to the KHRP, who had visited Kurdistan several times recently to look at the conditions of women and to observe rights trials, underlined the point about the current opportunity that is presented by the EU-Turkey accession process. “Never before since 1923 have the Kurdish people been given such an opportunity for their voices to be heard,” she declared.
Ms Owen spoke of the need to build up civil society organisations inside Turkey that could monitor the implementation of new laws at local level. From her experiences as a trial observer, she was aware that major injustices were rife and she did not believe that Turkey would be capable of delivering on reform while judges presiding in court were so dependent on the state. They were frankly unable to meet international standards, as she had witnessed for herself.   
She also thought the time was right for a thorough review of the Turkish constitution because it included so many articles wide open to abuse, such as “insulting Turkishness” under which author Orhan Pamuk had recently fallen foul.
Ms Owen paid tribute to the courage of human rights lawyers like Sehnaz and Erin Keskin who endured repeated harassment from the forces of the law as they carried out their vital work. She deplored the way that women activists from NGOs are repeatedly threatened by state officials to force them to stop their work.
One possible solution to deter such actions would be for the EU to target its project funding at better training of state officials especially those at the lower rank because these are the ones who abuse and intimidate Kurdish women activists.

Monireh Moftizadeh, a woman from the Iranian part of Kurdistan, called for all Kurdish women to work together to challenge the patriarchal attitudes that dominated the institutions in all the countries where the Kurds live. Women need not always remain victims, they could become effective activists if they were to develop unity. At present women were ignored by the international community, as is evident from the absence of women and women’s issues from the EU-Turkey talks.
Kurdish women suffered an additional discrimination because they were especially vulnerable as women belonging to a nation who had no state, she argued. Urging more solidarity from other women, Ms Moftizadeh said the Kurdish Women’s Charter could help other women understand the situation that Kurdish women faced. The aim was for the Charter to receive international recognition and then to be adopted into law in Kurdistan, for example, by the Kurdish assemblies in Iraq, but this would only be achieved if there was strong support for its principles from people in places like the UK.

Jean Lambert MEP reiterated the demands made for a common cause with Kurdish women and urged everyone to hold firm to the view that human rights are universal. The EU should not compromise on the basic criteria as it negotiates with Turkey. Ms Lambert, however, drew an important distinction between the human rights challenge to Turkey which activists supported and the arguments of the political right who thought Turkey was simply “too different” to ever be part of Europe. The Green MEP argued that there were many practical steps that could be taken through the European Parliament, such as ensuring that Turkey respects gender requirements in projects that receive EU funding. She noted that MEPs can now more easily pay visits to Turkey when they should be free to visit Kurdish NGOs, small progress but vital to put the country’s record more closely under the spotlight. A seasoned champion of the Kurdish cause, Ms Lambert welcomed and urged greater lobbying of the EU and the UK Parliament to make the politicians take notice of what was happening in Turkey.

Sarah Ludford, Liberal Democrat MEP, echoed many of the positive opinions of her fellow panellists, repeating the message that the European Parliament would not relax its human rights standards to admit Turkey. Another politician with a long and commendable record in support of Kurdish rights, Baroness Ludford described the changes over the past six years and recalled a time when delegations of MEPs visiting Turkey were treated with suspicion by officialdom. 
She applauded the positive role that might be played by local government exchanges between UK councils and Kurdish-run municipalities in Turkey. She spoke of MEPs’ high regard for Kurdish women such as Leyla Zana and urged EU negotiators to press for a political solution to the Kurdish question, although they had been reluctant to touch on this as it impacts on the political structure of a potential member state. Ms Ludford deplored the fact that Turkey was holding back accession funds for the EU’s domestic violence programme and felt that stronger lobbying was needed on this matter. She supported her colleague Jean Lambert’s view that campaigners should clearly make known their concerns about continuing human rights violations to MEPs because they were very keen to take up the issues once they had marshalled all the facts. She also thought that Kurdish and Turkish men had important roles in the struggle to achieve women’s rights, especially in the aftermath of conflict when attitudes become polarised.

All in all this was an extremely successful and encouraging meeting which raised numerous illuminating issues and led to several good suggestions for practical work that can be followed up in the near future. New contacts were formed and commitments given to carry out more work to assist the Kurdish people to achieve their just recognition so that they become firmly at the centre of the political agenda during this important period of EU-Turkey negotiations. 

David Morgan is a journalist and member of the Peace in Kurdistan Campaign

For more information please contact:
Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, estella24@tiscali.co.uk tel 020 7586 5892 or 020 72501315