Gender empowerment policies in Muslim countries.

A study case: Turkey

Abstract
This paper aims to give an overview on the women rights and empowerment processes in Muslim countries
and specifically in Turkey.
The concept of empowerment acquired a significant role in gender equality policies since the 90s.
Empowerment is not easily measurable or definable, because it is strictly connected to the cultural and social
context. However, we can consider it as a process through which a person or a group of persons acquires a
wider perception on their condition, rights and opportunities, enabling them to develop self-confidence, selfesteem and therefore abilities by which they can change their existing conditions and improve their own
lives.
Muslim religion cannot be considered as homogeneous and static; it is a religion that adapted itself to several
social and cultural contexts, acquiring traits belonging to cultures far from the Arab one, where it has its
origins. Consequently, it is inaccurate to link such religion to the only Arab culture.
The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) represents one
of the most important and legally binding tools concerning womens rights from the international point of
view. It has been adopted by the General Assembly of United Nations in 1979 and came into effect in 1981.
It gave a definition of the gender-based discrimination and established an international agenda in order to
challenge it. By the time in which a country ratify the Convention, it is obliged to undertake legal
instruments and political plans in order to guarantee the gender equality. Besides, it is committed to submit a
report to the CEDAW Committee every four years. The Committee examines the report, providing
recommendations and advices to the country, in order to conform to the CEDAW. A total of thirty-six
Muslim countries signed the CEDAW, but most of them made reservations to some of its articles, making de
facto useless the ratification of the Convention. Moreover the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights, draft by
the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in 1990, clearly states that if human rights are in contrast with the
Koranic law, the last will prevail.
Another important document about gender issues in Muslim countries is the Arab Human Development
Report of 2005. It is an unofficial document of UNDP, which displays persuasive argumentation on how a
complete fulfilment of the Arab womens potentiality is a fundamental prerequisite for the human
development of the Arab countries. From this report, it emerges that the family is the first social institution
that reproduce patriarchal relations, maintaining the gender inequality.
In the current debate among western societies and Muslim countries about gender issues, the first ones
criticize the way in which women are treated and the lack of legal rights. However, these critics do not
consider that Muslim women could have internalized a different role model, which is a fundamental part of
their identity and that cannot be easily divided from the religious tenets. In this perspective, conservative
Muslims can perceive the women rights struggle as the umpteenth strategy to strengthen western
imperialism and colonialism. A movement that could give its contribution in this context is the Muslim
feminism, through which Muslim women aspire to claim their rights through a renegotiation of the limits
imposed by their social and cultural context. In fact, since the laic movements for the gender equality have
been often considered forms of western neo-colonialism, Muslim feminist movements are the only ones able
to have credibility without appearing as an external threat.
In the Ottoman Empire the main law was the sharia and the man was clearly considered above the woman.
With the Tanzimat reforms (1839-1876) there were the first changes in regards to the family law and
womens rights. In 1923 the Turkish Republic was declared and Mustafa Kemal, called Ataturk, became the
first president. His main purpose was to establish a laic and modern nation. The womens emancipation was,
according to him, a consistent part of the modernization process. He put into force new civil and penal codes,
modernizing the family law; he gave to women politic rights, promoting gender equality in education and
employment. However, it is necessary to do some considerations: this state feminism had, as central myth,

the existence of a period in the past, antecedent to the conversion to the Muslim religion, during which there
was gender equality and democracy. The aim of spreading this version of history was to lessen the value of
Islamism, seen as an obstacle to the modernization of the country. Moreover, womens emancipation was
seen as a tool of this process and, therefore, it had to respect the limits given to it. In the 80s the liberal
feminism took hold in Turkey. In the previous decade, women became aware about the failure in the
implementation of the existing laws and about the wide gap within the regions of the country. After the coup
dtat in 1980 most of parties were forbidden, many politicians were arrested, hundreds of people were
murdered. After 3 years, the army gave back the power to civilians. Paradoxically, it is at this very time that
another wave of feminism arose. Some of the central themes were the domestic violence and the gender
inequality that women faced in their daily lives. Awareness womens groups arose in the country and several
campaign were launched; in 1988 there was the first feminist congress in Ankara and the civil society started
to make pressure in order to change several laws, like the one which stated that the man was the head of the
household, and therefore had a full decisional power within the family. In March 1988, a group of women
delivered a petition to the Parliament, asking for a full implementation of the CEDAW, which was signed by
the Turkish government in 1985, but with several reservations. In this period, many research centres and
NGOs about women issues were established. As a result, in the 90s, the Parliament modified many laws that
did not comply the equality principle and in 2002, it completed an extensive revision of the civil code. Since
the 90s, women NGOs in Turkey collaborated with international organizations, such as World Bank, UNDP,
UNFPA and UN, in order to promote womens empowerment. In 2004 another important goal was reached:
the reform of the penal code, modified by the Parliament following the recommendations of academics,
NGOs and local associations.
Women for womens Human Rights (WWHR) is a NGO, founded in 1993 in Istanbul. It had and still has an
important role both locally and internationally. Its strategy is based on several kind of actions: research and
publications, lobbying activities to political institutions and awareness raising activities. It coordinates the
Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) and it has a consultant role in the
ECOSOC. At a national level, WWHR promoted several campaigns and implemented a program called
Human Rights Education Program for Women (HREP). The CSBR was founded in 2001 after a meeting
between NGOs held in Istanbul. The Coalition aim to promote sexual, physical and reproductive rights in
Muslim societies. In 1995 WWHR, in partnership with a local womens centre, launched the HREP in the
Istanbul district of Umraniye. A second pilot project was launched in the South East of Turkey in 1997. In
1998 the General Directorate of Social Service (a national agency) started its cooperation with WWHR to
implement the program on a larger scale. The HREP is composed by five stages: establishment of a
partnership, trainers training, field implementation, monitoring and evaluation, bottom-up initiatives. The
program consist in debating several topics with a group of local women; among these topics there are human
and women rights, civil rights, domestic and gender-based violence, strategies against violence, economic
rights, communication, parenthood, sexuality, reproductive rights, civil and local organization. An external
evaluation of the program, carried out in 2002 highlighted the success of this program, given by the
comprehensive and result-oriented approach.
According the CEDAW Committee in Turkey there has been important improvements, such as the reforms
approved since the 90s. Nevertheless, the implementation of these reforms remains often partial or absent.
One of the main problems is womens employment, which is still low and concentrated in a few sectors.
Moreover, there is a low womens participation in politics. According the World Bank, in the last decade,
Turkey experienced an impressive economic development, and, according its projections, in 2023 it will be
one of the ten strongest economies. However, there are obvious gender inequalities regarding economic
possibilities and political empowerment. World Banks experts believe that the reason of these inequalities
are the social norms and the gender roles; however, they recognize the improvements made in terms of health
and education. The UNDP works in Turkey since more than 50 years. According their last report, Turkey is
the 72 country in the world for human development. In 2009, the UNFPA published the most extended
research on domestic violence ever made in Turkey. According to it, 39% of women experienced physical
violence from their partner and 15% of them experienced sexual violence. Along with these, women face
many control-oriented behaviours on a daily basis. The most unsettling aspect is the normalization of

violence by women themselves: 14% of them stated that it is acceptable that a man hit his partner and one
woman out of three declared that it is right to have a sexual intercourse against her own will. Another
important element that stood up is that nearly the half of women who experienced any kind of violence never
spoke out about it. Another important research is the one conducted by UNDP and UNFPA about the
dynamics of honour killings. From the research, it came to light that the concept of honour is strictly
connected to womens sexuality. The inability of a man to control the women of his family is perceived as
reason of shame and negative judgement by the community.
The relations between Europe and Turkey started in 1949, when Turkey became member of the Council of
Europe. In 1963, Europe and Turkey signed the Treaty of Ankara, which aimed to promote the economic
relations and trade. In 1987, the Turkish Prime Minister made a formal request to be member of the Council
of Europe and after two years, the European Commission expressed a negative response, blaming the Turkish
underdeveloped economy, the high unemployment rate and lack of political and civil rights. In 1999, Turkey
was officially recognized as a candidate member of the European Union. Nowadays it is obvious that the
adhesion process of Turkey ended in a stalemate. The reasons of this are several: diplomatic issues (Cyprus
and Armenia), the Kurdish issue, which is still cause of periodical instability; furthermore, there are
problems related to cultural and religious differences, since in Europe islamophobia is today stronger than
ever. Another problem concerns the change that there would be in terms of power distribution within the
European institutions: in fact, since the new vote system within the Council and the Parliament is based on
the demographic weight of each country, Turkey would have more decisional power of most of the other
countries. However, Europe carried out a set of actions in collaboration with Turkish institutions and NGOs
in order to improve womens conditions. In fact, womens empowerment has been pointed as a priority for
the adhesion process. According to the European Unions experts, the three main sources of gender
inequality are violence, womens unemployment rate and lack of education. Turkey has access to several
European cooperation funds: the IPA, the support tool for candidate countries, and the EIDHR, the tool for
democracy and human rights. Europe allocated to Turkey a total of 4,453.9 million euros for the period
2014-2020, through the IPA, and 1,332.75 million through the EIDHR.
Gender inequality and gender-based violence is a problem in every part of the globe; the most important
international organizations and agencies assert, since long time, the importance of implementing a gender
perspective into development programs, since womens discrimination affects adversely the economic and
the human development of the poorest countries of the world.
It is necessary to say that gender equality will not be reached just through laws. It will require a deeper
reflection. In fact, throughout our lives we internalized behaviour models, which could seem natural to us.
Now we need to ask to ourselves if the role model conferred to women is part of their nature, or it is just a
role shaped by the dominant culture. This is something that both women and men need to reflect about,
because equality is not something that will be reached unilaterally, but it has to be understood and accepted
by everyone.