HMB Report “The Istanbul Convention, Gender Politics and Beyond:
Poland and Turkey” Released
Date published: 22.06.2021
Hafiza Merkezi Berlin publishes a new report titled The Istanbul Convention, Gender Politics and Beyond: Poland and Turkey, researched and written by Cemre Baytok on the basis of exchange between feminist and LGBTI+ organisations from Turkey and Poland.
Read the report in English.
This report first provides a comprehensive mapping of the political landscape surrounding women’s rights in both countries with an emphasis on current issues and secondly explores women’s struggles and mobilization in response to the backlash in order to identify common strategies for civil society actors. The findings in the report are based on the HMB workshop and webinar “Challenging Patriarchy with the Crowds” that was held as part of the “Local Struggles – Transnational Strategies” exchange series in December 2020.
From the report:
“In order to understand the political context in which withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention has been brought up by both governments and their supporters, a comprehensive overview of their steps in the area of gender is absolutely crucial. The AKP and PiS share an authoritarian, conservative, undemocratic and populist orientation that has an inevitable impact on vested rights and women’s political gains. Pro-family policies that define women’s societal roles exclusively within the family and exclude all those who do not enter an official and heterosexual marriage union, banning, restricting access to or condemning abortion, criminalizing LGBTI+ identities, imposing and implying a single, uniform type of religion in all spheres of life, and finally grossly deviating from the rule of law are among recent and dominant political trends in Turkey and Poland. Themes coincide and the ideological motivations of the governments bear similarities, while the duration of their time in office, the sheer scope of their oppressive policies and therefore the magnitude of people’s experiences of inequalities and rights violations differ between these two countries.“