Antalya Women’s Counselling Centre and Solidarity Foundation

Founding Date: 17 October 2000 (Central), 3 January 2004 (Branch)

Focus: Violence against women, combating all types of discrimination against women

Aims: To fight to prevent all kinds of violence, pressure and discrimination against women, to provide legal and psychological support to women who have been or could be victims of violence, to strengthen women’s solidarity by raising awareness, to take decisions in every aspect of life that involves women and create and improve policies, to make sure women can use their rights, to provide women with support so that they can realise their wishes and views to comply with their own needs, and to strengthen women’s solidarity.

Legal Consultancy: Women experience violence at home and in the outside world, and because they are unaware of their legal rights or do not have the capacity to stand up for their own rights they are left alone. For this reason, the centre offers information and support on women’s legal rights and how they can use them with the help of volunteer female lawyers from the Antalya Bar Association.

Psychological Counselling: Women are provided with psychological counselling so that they can overcome the shame and fear resulting from the acceptance of violence as a fact of life and so that they can create new life choices for themselves. Women who have suffered physical, financial, emotional or sexual violence within the home or in the outside world are provided with counselling to cope with these issues and to develop their self-respect by clinical psychologists within the scope of our foundation’s means.

Events:

• As required by CEDAW and the Istanbul Agreement and based on protocols made with local authorities, there is housing support and a social worker on site two days a week.
• With support from the UN and the Swedish Embassy, projects regarding combating violence against women, physiological support for abused women, and human trafficking have been successfully completed.
• As a member of the IFE-EFI (Initiative Féministe Euroméditerranéenne — Euromed Feminist Initiative), we are part of the network’s management and attend its international meetings
• Classes on gender are provided.
• A 16 week-long educational course on Women’s Human Rights (KİHEP) is provided.
• Conferences, seminars, exhibitons, book and poetry readings are held, and similar projects are realised.
• Female murder trials are monitored.
• Women looking for work are brought together with other women who can help them.
• Press releases and demonstrations are organised.