HMB organised two workshops: Local Struggles Transnational Strategies – Poland and Turkey
Date published: 12/21/2020
In the summer of 2020, plans of the Turkish Government to withdraw from (then to rewrite!) the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention sparked an outcry of women’s organisations already fighting an uphill battle against the rampant cases of violence against women and femicides in the country. Their voices were echoed in countries facing similar hardships, such as in Poland, where the right-wing government has been actively dismantling women’s rights for years. There, civil society is more and more restricted through the Polish government’s tactics to force its own, inadequate standards of rule of law. But not only the case of violence against women provides an interesting comparison between the two countries. With recurring attacks on the rule of law, such as by dismantling the free judiciary and on the freedom of the press, Poland and Turkey sadly have many commonalities. While Turkey, as a non-EU country, faces an array of different challenges, the common access of human rights defenders to European human rights institutions with the claim of an international human rights standard, still makes it worthwhile to compare their similar challenges and strategies.
Hafiza Merkezi Berlin aims to be a hub for exchange between Turkish and European civil society. In December 2020, to implement this mission, we organised two workshops in the series “Local Struggles Transnational Strategies” to provide a space for civil society actors from Poland and Turkey to come together and share their experiences and lessons learned in the battle against their government’s pushback.
The first workshop, Challenging Patriarchy with the Crowds, was inspired by the pushback against the Istanbul Convention. An additional focus was added, when the Constitutional Court in Poland announced to further restrict the access to legal abortions through a ruling in late October, sparking immense national protests again known as Strajk Kobiet (Women’s Strike). The still ongoing protests became an important foundation for the exchange between the participants from Poland and Turkey. Through the HMB network, six participants from Turkey and three participants from Poland participated in the workshop. All participants are active within the civic space defending women’s and LGBTI-rights in their country context, be that as feminist activists, lawyers, or journalists. The workshop was facilitated by feminist activist Cemre Baytok.
The second workshop, Promise of Justice & International Law, was inspired by the ongoing struggle for an independent judiciary in both countries, which have both seen a systematic restructuring of the legal system for the governments’ political gains. We welcomed seven participants from Turkey and five from Poland, who were mostly lawyers, as well as social scientists, active in this field. The workshop was facilitated by Polish legal scholar Aleksandra Kustra-Rogatka.
To continue the fruitful discussion of our workshops, we opened two additional lines of activities:
We conducted two live events to continue the workshop discussions with a wider audience. Both have been recorded and can be found on the HMB YouTube channel.
In addition to our workshops, our facilitators will also continue to support HMB’s work by preparing two reports on the fruitful discussions in the workshops. Both reports will be published in the spring.
We are very happy to have successfully conducted two workshops, to have met with very interesting people from both countries, and to have had the chance to discuss the developments in both country contexts further. We believe that transnational exchange on struggles and strategies is an important tool for civil society actors to find new ways to continue their work and feel the support of the international community.