DTP women elected to Parliament with tough road ahead

During Turkey’s Parliament elections on Sunday, 15 of the newly elected deputies from eastern and southeastern Anatolia were women, and most came from the Democratic Society Party (DTP), according to Today’s Zaman. Coming from a region connected in many minds to honor killings, suicides and feudal pressures, how successful these new deputies will be in improving conditions for fellow females in the region is debatable.

Tarik Ziya Ekinci, a Kurdish intellectual, said women deputies will contribute to an improvement of women’s positions in the region. Nazik Isik, a well-known figure in Turkey’s feminist movement, said the DTP, trying to take steps in modernization and become a people’s movement, needs female power.

Most of the DTP’s women deputies have been working at various levels of the party organization given the party’s 40 percent quota for female representation.

Ayla Akat, the youngest newly elected DTP female deputy, is from Batman—a city often mentioned in connection with female suicide. She said violence is the biggest problem for women both in the region and across Turkey, and that they are planning to work together with female deputies of other parties in order to overcome this problem. They also aim for a new “women’s language” in Parliament to “raise awareness,” she said.

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