The 25th Assembly of Women’s Shelters and Solidarity Centres was hosted by Rosa Women’s Association on 12, 13 and 14 November 2022 in Diyarbakır. The Assembly was held under the heading of “How Do Family Oriented State Policies Undermine the Efforts to Combat Male Violence Against Women? and was joined on the first day by 310 women from women’s organizations, LGBTI+ organizations, public institutions and municipalities from various provinces.
This year the Assembly participants discussed a number of topics including the ongoing attacks against our achievements and rights, the approach adopted after the withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention, which increasingly steers away gender equality replacing it with family-oriented /pro-family policies and how these policies undermine our efforts to combat male violence against women. In particular, we think that the recent discussion on a constitutional amendment focusing on the definition of family is a clear indication of the state’s approach to this matter. The State cannot define family, the state’s responsibility is to protect women against domestic violence. We object to pro-family policies which reduce women to family, normalise gender inequality, try to mainstream an anti-LGBTI approach in almost all its policies and practices, ultimately leaving women to suffer violence. The approach that holds the family sacred at any cost even if women are subjected to violence is reflected in court judgments. We see that crimes of violence committed against women result in impunity or family courts deliver judgments against women. Combatting male violence should be constructed on empowering women and LGBTI+ persons, as opposed to protecting, preserving the family and holding it sacred.
The impact of pro-family policies on social policies constitutes a major barrier to women’s struggle in distancing themselves from violence and obstructs the protection of children. State policies that place the burden of coping with poverty on women’s shoulders give women social assistance as if they are handouts. Women have to cope with household work and care work while also struggling with poverty. They cannot access to resources they need for building a life free from violence. Support provided by local governments can make significant changes in women’s lives, nevertheless, most municipalities do not adopt a pro-women approach. In Kurdish provinces, the experiences of women and women’s organizations show that the trusteeship policies continue to adversely affect anti-VAW efforts.
In the face of family-oriented/pro-family policies imposed on us, we will continue our struggle against misogynist policies in Turkey and across the world, gaining strength from our feminist resistance and solidarity.
The Assembly of Women’s Shelters and Solidarity Centres would like to share with the public its demands/ main headlines below for its struggle to effectively ensure the continuity of our efforts to combat male violence against women:
- The unlawful decision to withdraw from the İstanbul Convention should be repealed and Turkey should again become signatory to the Convention.
- The name of the Ministry of Family and Social Services should be changed to the “Ministry of Women and Gender Equality”.
- Women’s organizations should have a say in the functioning and oversight of ŞÖNİMs and should be included in oversight mechanisms. These institutions should employ persons who have a woman’s perspective. Staff of these institutions and women’s organizations working in the field of violence should meet regularly and exchange data on violence.
- Qualified data should be maintained about violence against women and made public regularly.
- A 24/7 helpline should be established to provide specialized support only to women who experience violence. Helpline staff taking the calls should not only refer callers to the police or another institution but should provide the holistic support women need.
- Specialized staff should be employed at women’s shelters and counselling centres. Trainings, supervisory support and psychotherapy support should be continuously provided to staff in order to empower them. The staff should fully consist of women. The distribution of work should be fair and based on women’s needs, with clear distinctions among the roles of psychologists, social workers and administrators.
- All institutions and mechanisms that give support to women (women’s shelters, counselling centres, 24/7 helpline, social service centres, bar associations etc.) should provide multi-language support.
- Socio-economic support given to women for their children should be provided 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 any such support although they need it and have experienced violence. ŞÖNİMs should provide inter-agency coordination and ensure women’s access to social support.
- There should be regular and qualified social work targeting women and children at women’s shelters. Every woman and child should definitely have a designated social worker. Children should be considered in the planning of the physical structure of women’s shelters and solidarity centres. In particular, women’s and children’s differentiating needs and disability status should be taken into account.
- The article in the by-law that obstructs the admission of boys aged over 12 to women’s shelters should be amended, allowing the admission of all children regardless of their sex. Housing support should be provided de facto for women and children for whom it is impossible to live in a women’s shelter.
- Barriers to and ambiguities about the admission to women’s shelters of transgender women, migrant women, refugee women, women without identity, women aged 60 and over should be eliminated.
- Nurseries should be available for the children of women staying at women’s shelters. It is necessary to increase the number of nurseries especially for toddlers aged between 0-3, free nurseries, after-school supervised study classes and education centres. Local governments and social service centres should facilitate women’s access to these supports.
- Law enforcement and judicial mechanisms should fulfil the requirements of protective and preventive cautionary orders issued under the law no. 6284. Law enforcement and ŞÖNİMs should follow up on the protective and preventive cautionary orders issued under the law no. 6284 in accordance with the legislation. Those in violation of the cautionary orders should face a complaint process against them. Bad practices should be punishable, including cooperating with abusive family members, forcing women to make it up with the perpetrator, failing to keep a record of the incident of violence, failing to act on the criminal complaint or failing to issue a medical report for battery.
- Admissions to women’s shelters made through ŞÖNİMs should be recorded accurately and properly in the form of data. Furthermore, numerical data should regularly be shared with women’s organizations and relevant institutions.
- Attorneys should be assigned swiftly, without requiring documentation, to women who seek judicial assistance. The principle of confidentiality of women’s information should be followed. Similarly, to ensure that migrant women and LGBTI+ persons are not discriminated against and have equal access to justice, attorneys providing judicial assistance should get special in-house trainings and supervisory support. Only women attorneys should be in the roster of attorneys to be assigned to these cases. The approach to and the work on violence should be standardized.
- Local governments should prioritise providing specialized social services to combat violence against women. Municipalities that need to open women’s shelters should do so and recruit staff accordingly. Similar to the obligation of municipalities which have a population over 100.000 inhabitants to open a women’s shelter, the legislation should include an obligation that every municipality should have a women’s counselling centre regardless of the size of the population. Every municipality should engage in local visibility activities to disseminate the information about anti-violence mechanisms accessible to women.
- Local governments should take tangible steps responsive to gender inequality to alleviate the impact of family-oriented policies on the efforts to combat violence against women. Local governments should engage in effective collaborations with independent women’s organizations and LGBTI+ organizations active in this field and actively include these organizations in the development of strategy plans and local equality plans. These plans should absolutely include a budget earmarked specifically for combatting violence against women. Participation of the staff of women’s shelters and solidarity centres in the Assembly meetings should be politically supported and a budget should be allocated to ensure their participation; any barriers to their participation should be removed.
- The practice of having trusteeship in Kurdish provinces has completely eliminated the anti-VAW mechanisms in local government system. This practice should be abandoned.
- On the subject of child abuse in the form of child marriage, families or persons who coerce children into marriage and officials who perform the marriage ceremony should face criminal sanctions and the age of marriage should be raised to 12 in the Civil Code.
- Supportive mechanisms should be developed at schools for children who experience violence. The Ministry of National Education staff should include social workers and school social workers should be employed at schools.
- Judicial Interview Rooms, which should be available for persons who require expert support and do not want to meet the perpetrator, should be used not only for cases of sexual abuse but also for interviewing children in divorce cases.
- Child Monitoring Centres, established to prevent child abuse and provide well-informed and effective support to children, should be run in accordance with the by-law. The capacity and the number of these centres should be increased. Statement taking process should be carried out swiftly and from a single source.
- There should be a 24/7 emergency helpline, which all children, including migrant children, can directly contact and receive support.
- Public officials working in any field that involves contact with children (health, education, law enforcement, migration departments, judicial work etc.) should receive in-house trainings on a number of topics ranging from gender equality, violence against women, communication with children to the rights of the child, child-oriented approach and the mental impacts of violence on children and parents. The trainings should be given by independent experts in the field of the rights of the child; and a roster of experts should be developed.
- In cases where authorities issue a visitation order, which allows the father to see the child even if he has abused or inflicted violence on the child, the opinions of experts at the child handover centre should be taken into account before handing the child over to the father. In case the expert does not find the visitation appropriate, the child should not be handed over to the abusive father.
- All institutions that provide anti-sexual violence support to women including bar associations, hospitals, family and community health centres, social service centres and courthouses should ensure that their staff are well-informed about sexual violence and the impact and dynamics thereof. These institutions should have a pro-women perspective in their work.
- It is necessary to establish rape crisis centres/sexual violence centres which have holistic and specialized expertise on sexual violence, carry out preventive work, provide both urgent and short-term support and long-term social support, provide emergency medical and judicial response and employ specialized staff. Working groups comprising representatives from public institutions, women’s organizations and LGBTI+ organizations should be formed to identify how these centres should work.
- All public institutions that provide post sexual assault support including legal support, health and mental support should coordinate with each other. Psychoeducation and psychological first aid should be included in the post sexual assault support. Support should be provided by women who are competent in the dynamics of violence and work with a feminist perspective.
- 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. Any physical and mental evidence should be collected and reported in a qualified manner by law enforcement officers and health professionals experienced in the impact and dynamics of violence. The women should give a statement only for once and not be coerced into giving repeated statements.
- Information and examination should be provided to women with respect to sexually transmitted diseases and the likelihood of pregnancy. Women should be offered tools and options to prevent or terminate pregnancy. Barriers to abortion and contraceptive methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies should be lifted. The requirement to obtain the husband’s permission in the case of married women seeking an abortion should be removed.
- A position paper and a policy paper should be drafted for all institutions working in the field of combating violence against women to identify their approach to sexual violence as well as the principles to follow in support activities. Public institutions should have adequate budgets for anti-sexual violence services.
- Legal processes related to violence against women should be effectively carried out. The wording of the law should be adhered to. Arbitrary decisions of the judge with regard to temporary alimony or custody etc. should be prevented and perpetrators should be punished as required and in accordance with the law.
- It is necessary to disseminate the knowledge that there cannot be any mediation in court cases involving violence and that mediation is banned in divorce cases. Furthermore, if the woman states that she does not want a mediator, a mediator should absolutely not be called and there should not be any attempt to convince the woman into mediation.
- Family unity-oriented practices should be abandoned, which are creating challenges to women with regard to cautionary orders or alimony orders and which prolong divorce cases by requiring documentation for demands for alimony and custody.
- Women who build their own business or try to maintain their existing business while also coping with the experience of violence should receive enabling support including tax deduction and workplace lease support.
- Work contracts should include regulations that prevent the adverse impacts of violence on women’s work life. Relevant codes of conduct should be in place at workplaces. In case of male violence against a woman employee at work, the perpetrator should face sanctions as opposed to the practice of changing the workplace of the woman or terminating her work contract.
- If the woman demands a change in her workplace, her demand should be fulfilled without requiring hard evidence.
- In cases of violence where the perpetrator is a public official or an influential person, any hate speech or violent approach (against humanitarian values and personal rights of the victim including the victim’s race, belief, lifestyle, opinion etc., victim blaming) by the perpetrator and/or staff at administrative/judicial mechanisms should be punishable.
- In cases of violence where the perpetrator is a public official or an influential person, the practice of state officials protecting the perpetrator should be abandoned. Women and children subjected to violence should have access to support and justice. Measures should be taken to prevent impunity practices of administrative and judicial units.
- In prevailing poverty conditions deepened by the economic crisis, policies should be developed to empower women economically and not to render them reliant on family support. Social support should be in place to guarantee that women can live a life independent of family relations.
- It is imperative to eliminate state’s policies and the discourse which target women and LGBTI+ persons under the pretext of protecting the family, obstruct the implementation of the Law no. 6284, sway the opinion of public actors in charge of enforcing the law against women and legitimize violence. Furthermore, acts of violence against women and LGBTI+ organizations including harassment by the police and judiciary, repression, strip search and arrests, should end.
Components of Women’s Shelters and Solidarity Centres
1- Adana Women’s Solidarity Centre and Shelter Association (AKDAM)
2- Antalya Women’s Counselling Centre and Solidarity Association
3- 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.