President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans to withdraw Turkey from the so-called Istanbul Convention on domestic violence against women has angered many Turkish women – including his own party supporters and even some of his relatives.
The controversial decision has created a division in Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, as well as in women’s rights organisations close to his government.
One of those is the Women and Democracy Association, KADEM, two of whose board members come from Erdogan’s family.
One is his daughter, Sumeyye Erdogan-Bayraktar, and the other is Hafize Sule Albayrak, wife of the brother of Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, the Finance Minister.
Erdogan’s youngest daughter, Sumeyye, is a vice-president of KADEM and an important figure in Erdogan’s women’s movement. After studies at Indiana University in the US, she obtained an MA in economics from the London School of Economics, LSE, in 2008
Following her studies in these prestigious universities, she was made an adviser to her father in the AKP in 2010 on international media affairs, while also working in women rights.
The Istanbul Convention refers to the informal name of the Council of Europe’s Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
President Erdogan was one of the initiators of the convention and Turkey was the first signatory to the convention after the event took place in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, in May 2011.
But senior AKP names and Islamist intellectuals have recently said the convention undermines family values and promotes LGBTI identities, and some AKP leaders strongly defend the decision to withdraw. “The signing of the Istanbul Convention was really wrong,” AKP deputy chairperson Numan Kurtulmus said in a TV interview in July.
Some go much further. Abdurrahman Dilipak, a pro-AKP media columnist, accused KADEM and other AKP names of being behind of the convention, and even called the women who defended the convention “prostitutes”.
“Families are falling apart because of the Istanbul Convention. Our young are not marrying and married couples are lining up to divorce,” he added in his column.
KADEM and other women from the AKP dismiss such claims. “The Istanbul Convention was the first international agreement to provide protection for women from any kind of violence in a legal framework,” KADEM said in a statement, rebuffing claims that the convention promotes LGBTI issues and is one reason for the high number of divorces.
Erdogan’s women feel a dilemma
“The AKP wants to transform the family and its values and KADEM was established for this purpose and became an important policy tool for Erdogan,” Sevda Karaca, a women’s right activist at the Rose and Bread Initiative told BIRN.
“It also became the part of women’s movements with a conservative and religious difference,” she added.
KADEM, including Erdogan’s daughter, were actively involved in the Istanbul Convention process, especially in having the convention signed in the Turkish city in 2011, alongside other senior AKP names such as former ministers Fatma Sahin, Fatma Betul Sayan-Kaya and former MP Nursuna Memecan.
“Although KADEM is a policy tool for Erdogan’s party, they have found themselves in a dilemma, as the AKP plans to withdraw from the convention that they worked for. They also see the anger of their female electorate. That is why they are not against the convention,” Karaca said.
Sumeyye’s brother, Bilal, is also active in the NGO sector and is a founder and board member of the Turkey Youth Foundation, TUGVA, though he has different ideas to his sister.
He seems to support withdrawing from the treaty. The Istanbul Convention “made no contribution to our society”, TUGVA said in a statement on August 3.
Karaca said many women who voted for the AKP now think their rights risk being eroded by the policies of the government they helped elect.
“Violence against women is a chronic problem in Turkey and many women from more conservative backgrounds voted for the AKP seeking having protection – but now they are angry,” Karaca said. “The AKP is divided because of this anger,” Karaca added.
Nursuna Memecan, a former AKP lawmaker who actively attended the writing of the Istanbul Convention as head of Turkish delegation at the Council of Europe, is also grieved by plans to withdraw.
“Erdogan supported all our work at the times and now there are plans to withdraw from a convention whose name is Istanbul. This is tragicomic,” Memecan told Gazete Duvar.
Party risks taking women for granted
Anit Sayac, a digital database that records the number of women dying from gender-based violence, showed that 205 women have been murdered this year in the country so far – a rate that makes Turkey one of the worst countries in the world in this field. A total of 416 women were killed in 2019.
Sezin Oney, a political scientist and journalist based in Istanbul, told BIRN: “Although violence against women is very widespread and the number of femicides is very high, violence against women is a red line for Turkish society”, in that many do not want to discuss it.
“The people who object to the Istanbul Convention are a small group but they have access to the government and can make a noise,” Oney added.
“Discussing a convention that has been in force for years is ironic. Violence against women is a betrayal of humanity,” Fatma Betul Sayan-Kaya, former minister for women and the family and deputy chairperson of the AKP, wrote on Twitter on August 3.
However, the ruling AKP has changed its position during its 18 years in power, and has generally become more Islamist and conservative.
“The AKP wants to redesign family values with a more religious outlook within a legal framework and the debate on withdrawing from Istanbul Convention is related to this,” Oney said, and added: “However, they did not take AKP women into consideration. They thought that they will accept this move without any objection but they were wrong. They obviously underestimated women.”
Karaca also thinks that the AKP’s policies have made women more united.
Signs of backing down
An AKP board meeting scheduled for August 5, which was due to decide on whether to withdraw from the convention, has now been postponed to August 13 – allegedly because of Erdogan’s busy agenda.
For some, however, the real reason for the delay is the widening division within Erdogan’s own party and his supporters over the convention.
“The postponement is the result of the women’s fight, which has continued for a long time. The anger is also getting bigger among conservative women, so the AKP had to slow down,” Karaca said.
Mustafa Sentop, speaker of parliament, and also from the AKP, tellingly said on August 6 that withdrawing from the convention might not be necessary.
“The Istanbul Convention has contributed the fight against the violence against women,” Sentop said, deepening the divisions in AKP ranks.
“The only movement that can take to the streets in Turkey now is the women’s movements and the movement is getting stronger,” Oney said.
“According to polls, the majority of the AKP electorate is women. The government should have convinced women before making such a decision but they did not do so because male decision makers thought that women would follow their suit,” Oney explained.
On August 5, thousands of women from a wide spectrum staged simultaneous protests in different Turkish cities, including the largest cities of Istanbul, Izmir, Eskisehir and the capital Ankara, in support of the convention.
Women’s movements have now started a new campaign, noting August 13 as the decision day for the fate of the Convention.
Oney said the AKP will have a tough time persuading senior female AKP politicians and NGOs like KADEM to swallow withdrawal from the convention.
“They are the architects of the Istanbul Convention,” Oney said. “If they support the government’s decision, they will lose their prestige and will not be taken seriously at either local and international levels.
“If they support the country’s withdrawal from the convention which provides legal protection for Turkish women, they would jeopardise their own existence,” Oney concluded.
