Carrying water to the struggle which will change the life

When I was five years old, I learned how to read and write, and also noticed that a lot of women were illiterate while the great majority of men were literate. I thought that women of the same age as my mother should know how to read and write.
I ventured to teach them and tired out the aunts who embraced me with love. I do not remember if any one of them learned how to read and write. However, now when I look back, I see that I enjoyed challenges—if there was problem, I wanted to help solve it.

Perhaps that is the reason why I tried a lot to include the disabled, veiled, Kurdish and lesbian women, in other words women who were exposed to multiple forms of discrimination, when we set out to prepare civil society shadow reports. On the third day after I became the Secretary General of Women’s Branch in CHP, I invited everyone, including the veiled women and the representatives of LGBT people, to the Head Office to learn about what they think on the Constitution Referendum in 2010. In my positions as project coordinator in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and a planning specialist in the State Planning Organization, all kinds of women were able to approach me. We ate together in the cafeteria and discussed issues with each other.

I remember reading for my classmates in the primary school. I was in third grade when we started to run the library, which we founded with 1500 books, all of which we had bound nearly one by one. It had a reading hall and book lending service. My primary school teacher must have dealt with this crazy girl with glasses, running all around, by guiding her to activities in sports, theatre and library. What I learned from those years is that there are multiple ways of getting involved and intervening in life.

I must be the only kid who read every book by the order in which they were placed on the shelves at the Ahmet Vefik Paşa People’s Library, in which I was enrolled by my mother on the same day on which I was enrolled in the secondary school. Reading gave me the opportunity to witness the multiplicity of lives which I could not live or observe. Maybe that is how I learned not to shy away from touching different lives and saying “hello” to anyone, thinking that we have something in common with everyone. I can talk and learn about everything- about the lace and embroidery, the flour and the firewood used by bakers, the insects at which the kids look and the henna on the hair of the aunts which turned orange and the beads of the uncles and their hooded boots. That is why I gathered so many stories to tell.

The idea of changing life

I used to teach math to my friends when I was in secondary school. I was a 14-year-old senior student at the secondary school when I started to teach science to my younger friends in the Karşıyaka Halkevi (People’s House). I opposed the execution of Deniz Gezmiş that year (1972) and participated in petitions. I am against capital punishment since that day. I worked for it to be abolished and now I work so that it is not brought back.

I had already understood that I could do a lot to change people’s lives before I came to think that we could change the life itself. It was not out of charity that I thought so; I really believed at a very early age that we all had a right to live better lives. I was in high school when I understood that it is good to change things step by step but much better to have a complete change. We needed to be organized and attain power to have complete change. However, it is very important both to know what to do and to have the necessary human and economic power when you came to power.

For many years, I worked to win people one by one and to develop a common political struggle on the one hand, and to learn about planned and programmed progress and development on the other. I studied at the Faculty of Political Science. The reason was that I wanted my people to live in a developed country and I wanted to be one of those people who would achieve that goal. I wanted to work in the State Planning Organization—and I did.

It was the striking encounter I had with women when I was five that led me to prioritize care about women’s lives all the time and to be very concerned about inequalities and discrimination. I witnessed the worst kind of discrimination at an early age because I had to behave as an elder sister to my disabled elder brother. I understood at an early age that struggling for rights did not have an age and that my sense of justice and courage would suffice for that struggle.

DAL (Deep Interrogation Laboratory), Mamak, SBP (the Socialist Union Party)

People like me of course have their share from the coups that occurred in this country. I had my share as well. I was brought to the Mamak Prison after the torture center DAL (Derin Araştırma Laboratuvarı- Deep Interrogation Laboratory) in Ankara… I am proud to be one of those women who struggled to continue being humane, honourable humans in Mamak. I still remember Mamak each time we sing the Turkish National Anthem and swear to struggle so that what we went through would not be lived again. I know that dictatorships make dishonourable, coward and faint-hearted people who give in to the evil and avoid change. That is why I fight so that we don’t go through it again.

I continue to participate in women’s struggle which I joined in my college years. Previously, I tried to contribute to the empowerment of women so that they can participate in life. I taught them how to read and write, to earn money by working at home, to attain knowledge to raise their children better and to have a say in matters related to their neighborhood as women and mothers… 

Then came the struggle against violence against women. I cannot forget how excited I was when I undertook to lead the panel which we organized in Ankara as the first panel on domestic violence. I do not really know how many cities I wandered to talk to women and men and explain them what violence against women was and why it was a problem of democracy, a political problem. As the Socialist Unity Party was founded, we struggled to define domestic violence and violence against women as a crime against the party. I cannot forget how astonished I was to find myself standing on the table of the council during the discussions.

Women’s Solidarity Association, Women’s Coalition and European Women’s Lobby

It has been 25-26 years since I wrote the project for the first women’s counseling center and shelter in Ankara. I am one of the women who founded the Women’s Solidarity Association. I worked in the association myself for seven years. We touched the lives of thousands of women and changed the future of thousands of children with that counseling centre and shelter. We made struggle against violence against women one of the tasks of the state, changed the laws and other regulations, had the women’s counseling centres and shelters defined as public institutions, prepared action plans and reported the real situation with our follow-up reports.

I was one of the few feminists who supported the foundation of the General Directorate on the Status and Problems of Women. Then, I worked as the vice general director of that institution as well. In 2000s, I wrote the framework of the first project of the state on domestic violence against women, which was implemented with the financial support of the European Union. I was the counseling coordinator who prepared and implemented the training program on how to treat women exposed to violence, which was included in the in-service training of the police. I spent two and a half years doing that and now we have too little at hand. In other words, we still have a lot to do.

I am really proud to be one of the women who laid the foundation of many commonalities through the Women’s Coalition, European Women’s Lobby, the CEDAW Shadow Reports and the Shadow Report on the 2000 Millennium Special Session.

CHP Women’s Branch, Working Group on Home-Based Working Women

I have always been interested in politics. I participated in politics actively since my college years. I left my civil service post in 2002 for this reason. I have been the Secretary General of Women’s Branch, Party Assembly Member and deputy member of the Central Executive Board in CHP (Republican People’s Party). I wanted to be a member of the parliament but have not been able to achieve that yet. I still rush around. I think many important improvements happened in women’s place in politics and I had a hand in it! I am happy about that.

In 1996, I wanted to found the Working Group on Local Politics to increase the number of female mayors and council members and encourage them and to have municipalities meet with women. We finally achieved that goal in 2004. I am glad that this work that took four and a half years to complete still continues as an important part of the work of the “Women-friendly Cities.” I am also glad that the work we conduct with the Equality of Women and Men Commissions at the Equal Life Association started to bear fruits.

I am an economist specializing in issues of social policies and the labor market. Besides my expertise on planning, I taught social policy at the university for 12 years and worked on new building up organizations with the Working Group on Home-Based Working Women. It is my sixth year in the Rural Development Initiative.

Now I have a lot to do. Those who want to change life have to carry water to a rich struggle in various fields. Even if we could not green everywhere we touched, I am glad to have had so many great experiences which prove that we left a mark. This article is one of them. Thank you.