Party of woman: HDP

2015-04-09 12:44:48

ISTANBUL (DİHA) – With its recent parliamentary candidate list drawing attention for its 48% ratio of women, the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is aiming to defeat patriarchal power in Turkey's Parliament in this June's election. Ayşe Erdem, HDP Istanbul provincial co-chair, said the new list is the culmination of years of struggle by women for equal representation in politics.

The HDP's (Peoples' Democratic Party) platform on women's struggle includes replacing the current Family and Social Policies Ministry, infamous for its minister's statements that in the face of the wave of rape and femicide in Turkey parents should "teach their children to scream," with a Ministry of Women. Many candidates, such as feminist lawyer Filiz Kerestecioğlu, have a history of working on violence against women. The HDP wants to ensure the legal status as workers of Turkey's domestic workers; to improve the condition of hyper-exploited women hired under subcontracting schemes; to open daycare services in Turkey; to remove the informal blocks on abortions; and more.

She explained that the women's assemblies within the HDP make independent decisions that are adopted by wider party bodies automatically. During the process of determining the Parliamentary list, the women's assemblies also formed a committee with the right to issue cautions about male candidates. "We said when we started these elections that we're half the world, and we're here to be half the Parliament, too," said Erdem. "Since the other parties would not make this happen, we ensured that our candidates would be half women."

Erdem stressed that the party list was not formed by simply running women candidates in provinces where they had little chance; rather, the party used a "zipper system" (alternating candidate selection from local and central bodies in the party) to assign women candidates to a range of different districts. 

Turkey has one of the world's highest electoral thresholds and the highest in Europe, at 10%. Erdem called the electoral threshold a patriarchal system designed to marginalize groups facing discrimination, including women and people of non-hegemonic identities.The HDP is known for the participation of people from a range of different identities in Turkey.

"For women from different traditions and struggles to come together wasn't easy, but we did it. Now I find it to be very important that women will work together to overcome the patriarchal electoral threshold," she said. "Whatever kind of world we want to see, that's the kind of party we want to see," she said. "With these policies, we're doing politics with multiple identities, voices and languages."

(cm/nt)