Due to pandemic conditions, we convened online again this year for the twenty fourth Assembly of Women’s Shelters and Solidarity Centres held on 6, 7 and 9 November 2023. The main heading of this year’s Council was “Anti Gender Equality Policies and Our Feminist Strategies in Combatting Violence Against Women”. 267 women from women organizations, LGBTI+ organizations and public institutions from various provinces joined the first day of the Assembly. Both in the world and in Turkey, we have been going through a period that sees a rise in the attacks against the İstanbul Convention in particular and the concept of gender equality, which we have been discussing at the Assembly in recent years.
In the case of Turkey, the final straw was Turkey’s withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention by a decision published midnight in the Official Gazette on 20 March 2021. As components of the Assembly, we have been pointing to the implementation problems of the İstanbul Convention while stressing its importance for the efforts to combat violence against women. The attitude of the Turkish State, who was supposed to display a political willpower to fully implement the İstanbul Convention, revealed once more that it neither has the resolution nor the intention to combat violence against women.
While the discussions continue on what will replace the İstanbul Convention, the national plans of action and strategy documents clearly indicate an approach that is steering away from gender equality and introducing family-oriented policies instead. Every new plan of action and strategy paper constitutes a regression and is a proof of the lack of policy. The failure of the State to monitor and evaluate its own work points to its lack of care about the effectiveness of the plans and displays its failure to fulfil its responsibility to account for the combat against violence against women.
We expect local governments in particular to put into action their discourse that is supportive of the İstanbul Convention. We expect them not only to fulfil their obligations stated in the legislation but also to work in cooperation with women’s organizations and develop strategic plans with a feminist perspective. We demand that they not recognise the decision to withdraw from the İstanbul Convention and show their commitment to the values of the Convention in their actions.
As women’s organizations combatting violence against women, we are witnesses to the experiences of women who struggle to distance themselves from violence. These experiences show that women face serious challenges in accessing anti-violence mechanisms in Turkey. The monitoring reports we prepared based on the experiences of women struggling to distance from violence show that the Law no. 6284 is not implemented properly, ŞÖNİMs fail to provide coordination and the problems faced in the implementation of confidentiality orders cause so severe difficulties, even resulting in risks to life safety, that women sometimes prefer to revoke these confidentiality orders. Women in need of economic support face problems in accessing support primarily due to lack of coordination. The reports and the experiences of women’s organizations in Kurdish provinces reveal that most state mechanisms obscure women’s struggle and try to render existing women’s units and institutions unfunctional. This has become an institutionalised practice especially with trusteeship policies. Notwithstanding the formal withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention, we know that women’s struggle is going strong both in Turkey and in the world; and we gain strength from this to continue our work. We fight with our international feminist resistance and solidarity against anti gender equality and misogynist movements.
The 24th Assembly of Women’s Shelters and Solidarity Centres would like to share with the public its demands/ main headlines for its struggle to effectively ensure the continuity of our efforts to combat male violence against women:
- The Assembly of State should repeal the unlawful decision to withdraw from the İstanbul Convention.
- ŞÖNİMs should conduct admissions to women’s shelters which are currently carried out by law enforcement on account of the pandemic.
- Preventive and protective cautionary orders should be issued for 6 months or an indefinite amount of time in consideration of women’s needs. On account of confidentiality orders, women face a number of systemic challenges including not being able to get an appointment at state hospitals, access their own information on e-state, e-pulse or MHRS (central physician appointment system) etc., open a bank account or have an identity issued due to lack of address. These systemic challenges should be addressed to ensure that women who have confidentiality orders have easy access to all these systems. All relevant institutions should comprehend what a confidential record entails and how to implement it. ŞÖNİMs should assume the role of coordination in this regard.
- Socio-economic support (SES) often provided to women for their children should also apply to women staying at women’s shelters. Social service models should be developed to provide regular economic support to unmarried or childless women who do not receive a regular economic support such as SES. ŞÖNİMs should provide inter-agency coordination and ensure women’s access to social support.
- A 24/7 helpline should be available only for women who experience violence. This helpline should provide service in multi-languages. Helpline support staff should not simply refer callers to the police or any other institution. Women well-versed in the field of violence should actively listen to women callers and provide first psychological aid in times of crises. KADES application should be available in multi-languages, including Kurdish. It should be user friendly, making it easier for women to use the application.
- Local governments should prioritise women’s shelters. Municipalities that need to open a women’s shelter should do so and recruit staff accordingly. Similar to the obligation of opening a women’s shelter for municipalities that serve a population over 100.000 persons, every municipality should have a women’s counselling centre. Every municipality should carry out visibility activities to disseminate the information about local mechanisms available to women who experience violence.
- Municipalities should consider the needs and priorities of the work on women’s shelters. Given that lengthy official correspondence could put women’s safety at risk, municipalities should have some leeway for their correspondence procedures.
- Municipalities should come together to develop a by-law on a new model of women’s shelters based on women’s needs and a pro-women perspective, replacing the rules and repressive attitudes found in the by-law of the Ministry.
- Qualified staff should be employed at women’s shelters. Trainings, supervisory support and psychotherapy support should be provided to the staff to empower them. The distribution of work should be fair and determined based on women’s needs. The roles of psychologists, social workers or administrators should be clearly defined. Workshops should be regularly held for psychologists, social workers and directorates under all relevant units on women’s shelters, refreshing the knowledge on what constitute a women’s shelter and how it should be run.
- ŞÖNİMs should facilitate women’s access to hospitals and if necessary, accompany them for the medical test required for their admission to women’s shelter during the pandemic. It is important to refrain from the approach that aims at deterring women from going to a women’s shelter by telling them that there will be a quarantine. Instead, an approach that considers women’s needs should be adopted.
- Nurseries should be provided for women and children staying at women’s shelters. The by-law that obstructs the admission of boys aged over 12 to women’s shelters should be revised and the accommodation support stipulated in the by-law should be provided.
- Women’s psychological and economic demands have grown on account of the increasing and differentiating post-pandemic needs. Public institutions and local governments should prepare gender-sensitive budgets in consideration of these needs. Social support mechanisms should be established to enable women to build a life free of violence.
- Municipalities should inclusively identify the specific needs of LGBTI+ persons and meet these needs without delay.
- General health insurance provided at the ministry’s women’s shelters should also be available in municipal women’s shelters and private women’s shelters.
- The Ministry should have a specific budget earmarked from the central government budget, including that of the Presidency, for opening women’s shelters and counselling centres at municipalities and meeting local needs.
- Public institutions and local governments should take on an active role in ensuring women’s access to free and qualified psychological support.
- Public institutions and local governments should include women’s organizations in their provincial coordination boards. Information shared at these boards and how women benefit from existing services should be made public. The information should include quantitative data.
- Women’s contacts with women’s organizations show that they mostly make contact over WhatsApp, e-mail and social media. Public institutions and local governments should take this into account and become more accessible in consideration of women’s needs.
- To take concrete steps towards combating violence against women, local governments should engage in effective cooperation with independent women’s organizations active in the field. Follow-up processes of the cooperation should be transparent and consequently be easy to monitor by civil society and women’s organizations.
- Local governments should offer permanent solutions for the post-pandemic rise in women’s poverty by allocating a budget to tackle this as part of social policies, responding in particular to the need for housing.
- Local action plans for equality should immediately be drafted for all municipalities. Preparatory periods should be inclusively structured incorporating equality units and civil society organizations and implementation should begin.
- Support systems should be established to relieve women from the burden of care work and ensure women’s participation in labour force with guarantees. A mechanism should be established to ensure women’s enjoyment of social security; all women should have social security. Protective measures should be taken for women who have had to work informally, half-time or flexible hours due to crises.
- Emergency plans of action should include special arrangements for women, abandoning strategies that place the burden of crises on women.
- It is necessary to stress that inadequate social support policies, which can be used as an election campaign material, cannot tackle women’s poverty. Budget earmarked for social support should be increased and social support should be regular and continuous as a right, as opposed to providing periodic handouts.
- Attorneys should immediately be assigned to women without requiring any economic or other criteria when they seek assistance from judicial assistance bureaus. Attorneys working in the field of judicial assistance and the Code of Criminal Procedure should receive regular trainings on gender inequality, violence against women and the principles of conducting interviews.
- Withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention does not nullify the Law no. 6284. Law enforcement and judicial mechanisms should fully implement the preventive and protective cautionary orders issued under the law no. 6284. Preventive and protective cautionary orders issued under the law no. 6284 should be followed up by law enforcement and ŞÖNİMs in accordance with legislation.
- Law enforcement should inform women that they can have preventive or protective cautionary orders issued without filing in a compliant.
- Temporary alimony orders should not be issued belatedly and the alimony amount should not be low. Effective solutions should be developed to ensure the payment of alimonies.
- Persons who promote early or forced marriages, perform or participate in religious ceremonies to facilitate early or forced marriages should be punished. It should be accepted that early marriage is a sexual violence under any circumstances and accordingly, the practice of giving judgments of acquittals under various pretexts should be abandoned.
- Bar associations should provide regular monitoring and reporting in the field of violence against women.
- As seen in the cases of Şerife Demir, Çilem Doğan, Melek İpek, Nevin Yıldırım, Yasemin Çakal, the courts considering the claim of “self-defence” should take into account the past systematic violence suffered by women who, acting in self-defence, had to kill not be killed.
- ŞÖNİMs which have the duty of providing inter-agency coordination in every province should hold meetings with Provincial Migration Administrations to discuss the problems faced by migrant women and refugee women in their attempts to distance themselves from violence and develop solutions for using local resources effectively.
- Statements given as part of formal procedures by migrant women and women of foreign nationality are considered valid if they are accompanied by certified interpreters. There is not a mechanism in place to satisfy the need for certified interpreters. Applications made with the help of interpreters working for women’s organizations are considered null and void and rendered invisible due to the lack of certified interpreters. This problem in the implementation should be resolved. To meet this need, interpreters should be recruited at public institutions and local governments.
- As stated in the İstanbul Convention, action should be taken immediately to establish rape crisis centres/sexual violence centres which i) have a holistic and specialized expertise on sexual violence, ii) carry out preventive work, iii) provide both urgent and short-term support and long-term social support, iv) provide emergency medical and judicial response and v) employ specialized staff.
- Awareness about sexual violence should be raised and trainings should be provided.
- Professionals providing support to women as part of anti-sexual violence efforts should inform women about the process and what to expect; however, women should make their own decisions on what action to take.
- In cases of complaints of sexual assaults, the investigation period should be initiated based on the woman’s statement. Existence of hard evidence should not be required to initiate an investigation. An effective investigation should be carried out; the women should give a statement only for once and not be coerced into giving repeated statements.
- Women’s organizations and bar associations should be allowed to intervene in court cases involving sexual violence. Lawyers assigned to these cases by the Ministry should follow up the whole legal process. They should not be involved in the case if they do not follow up the process.
- A guideline should be prepared on what to do after surviving a sexual assault. In-house trainings should be given primarily to units providing first step support. All institutions that provide services to women with respect to sexual violence including bar associations, hospitals, schools, social service centres and courthouses should have staff who work with a pro-women perspective and who are well-informed on violence, impacts of sexual violence and its dynamics. A position paper and a policy paper should be drafted for all relevant institutions to identify the approach to sexual violence and the principles of support activities.
- Forensic medicine units should be accessible. Physicians performing examinations at hospital emergency rooms should be experienced in the impacts and dynamics of violence and be proficient to collect evidence of violence.
- Survivors of sexual violence should be examined and informed about sexually transmitted diseases and the likelihood of pregnancy. They should be offered tools and options to prevent or terminate pregnancy. Post sexual violence mental support should not be limited to psychotherapy and should be provided by women who are competent in the dynamics of violence and have a feminist perspective.
- Social Service Centres should be capable of providing psychological and psycho-social support to women and children. If children are involved, families should be informed of these available supports without having to demand them. A system should be developed to provide support to families.
- Post sexual violence support should be accessible to migrant women and refugee women. Interpretation support should be available and interpreters should have a strong command of the languages.
Long live women’s solidarity for a World Free of Violence and Shelter!
Components of the Assembly of Women’s Shelters and Women’s Solidarity and Counselling Centres*
1- Adana Women’s Solidarity Centre and Shelter Association (AKDAM)
2- Antalya Women’s Counselling Centre and Solidarity Association
2- Aydın Söke Women’s Shelter, Counselling and Solidarity Association
4- Bodrum Women’s Solidarity Association (BKD)
5- Buca Evka-1 Women’s Culture and Solidarity Association (BEKEV)
6- Çanakkale Association for Utilizing Women’s Handicraft and Women’s Counselling Centre (ELDER)
7- Deniz Yıldızı Women’s Solidarity Association
8- Edirne Women’s Central Solidarity Association (EKAMEDER)
9- Association of Women With Disabilities (ENG-KAD)
10- Fethiye Women’s Counselling and Solidarity Association
11- Günebakan Women’s Association
12- İzmir Çiğli Evka 2 Women’s Culture Association / ÇEKEV
13- İzmir Women’s Solidarity Association
14- Women’s Solidarity Foundation
15- Women’s Time Association
16- Women’s Solidarity Foundation (KADAV)
17- Katre Women’s Counselling and Solidarity Association
18- Koza Women’s Association
19- Lotus Women’s Solidarity and Life Association
20- Mersin Independent Women’s Association (BKD)
21- Mimoza Women’s Association
22- Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter Foundation
23- Mor Salkım Women’s Solidarity Association
24- Muğla Emek Benim Women’s Association
25- Rosa Women’s Association
26- Star Women’s Association
27- International Migrant Women’s Solidarity Association (UGKDD)
28- Urla Women’s Solidarity Association (URKAD)
29- Life, Women, Environment, Culture and Business Cooperative (YAKA-KOOP)
30- Yaşamevi Women’s Solidarity Association
* Adıyaman Women’s Life Association, Ceren Women’s Association, Gökkuşağı Women’s Association, Muş Women’s Roof Association, Muş Women’s Association, Selis Women’s Association and Van Women’s Association, which are components of the Assembly of Women’s Shelters and Solidarity/Counselling Centres, could not be listed above because they were closed by the Decree (KHK/677) dated 22 November 2016 on Some Measures Within the Scope of the State of Emergency.