Özel: 'Come for the Istanbul Convention, for equality, vote, and make history'

CHP Chairman Özgür Özel, in his speech at the event, recalled the primary election his party will hold to determine its presidential candidate and addressed the women in the hall.
Özel said, "I invite all the women of Turkey to Turkey's spring, to the spring of democracy, to the democratic revolution on March 23. Come, vote, and make history. You will come and elect a president. You will bury all inequalities in history. To elect a president who will re-sign the Istanbul Convention and send it to Parliament, for equality, for the struggle, come, vote, and make history," he said.

CHP leader Özel, in his speech at the "If there are women, there is life" event held at the CHP Headquarters as part of March 8 International Women's Day, stated, "I respectfully greet the Turkish women's movement and everyone who contributes to its struggle. Both Chair Asu explained and we followed through the videos we watched where the women's rights struggle in the world has come from and where it is going, how this struggle started and rose in Turkey, and what problems it has had in recent times. We are all living through it ourselves," he expressed.

Stating that "it is necessary to identify that the cause of all problems in the country is authoritarianism, a lack of law, and an ideological perspective replacing the democratic management approach," Özel continued:

"We believe in the rule of law, the separation of powers, a strong parliament, and that those elected by the people should govern; since half of those who vote are women and half are men, we believe that half of those who govern should be women and half should be men. The first step on this path began in 1930 with the granting of this right to women in local elections. In 1935, while many European countries could not even talk about or discuss this issue, while winds of fascism were blowing, genocides were occurring, and women were being subjected to massacres and rapes, while there was no one to talk about women's rights, those who led the great struggle for liberation in these lands, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, his comrades-in-arms, and İsmet İnönü, whom we just heard from his daughter's mouth, always advocated for gender equality in this country, for women to participate in social life, not in a way where they are locked behind doors or curtains or forbidden from showing their faces, but to be in society, in social life, and in working life in whatever way they want, with whatever clothing they want. They waged a great struggle.

'WE SAID WE WOULD INCREASE THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AND YOUTH IN POLITICS'

We are only just catching up to the step they took 90 years ago. The 1935 parliament was the election where 18 female deputies entered parliament. Until very recently, we had not been able to surpass this figure. I expressed our commitment to making our party a party of youth and women, looking into the eyes of each of you, both at the change congress and at the women's branch congress we held afterward. We said we would increase the representation of youth and women in politics. The party is operating its internal processes regarding this in a difficult but very healthy way. CHP was the first party in Turkey to pronounce a women's quota, with the vision of Erdal İnönü and the women in his cabinet. They set out with 25 percent that day. CHP discussed this as 20 percent 10-12 years ago and reached a 33 percent women's quota after a congress. We were determined to put equal representation in our party charter. There were objections and discussions at this congress. But instead of taking a step back or leaving it to the future, it took a strategic step forward. We said let this 33 percent be gradual, let it be 40 percent first, then 45 percent at the next congress. We said let there be equal representation at the congress 3 after that, and we wrote this into our charter.

'WE ELECTED 35 FEMALE MAYORS WITH A 450 PERCENT INCREASE COMPARED TO 2019'

This is no longer a wish. It is a legal reality. In every congress held, with the stages written in the temporary article, full equal representation will be achieved after 3 congresses. We did not have a regulation for this in the local elections, but we had a very clear determination. We said that since we had a 33 percent quota in municipal councils, this 33 percent quota cannot be filled by putting women at the end of the list or by writing women in places where they will not be elected just to meet the quota. It will be a window method. If it is one, two, three, there will be a woman in the first three. There will be another in the second three, and in the third three. In this way, we jumped to a figure of 6,500 women entering municipal council rankings in Turkey. With a 450 percent increase compared to 2019, we elected a total of 35 female mayors. If we conducted a poll and there was more than one winner in the poll, if there was one woman among them, we appointed that woman directly. Regarding the process after this, for example, while there was only one female metropolitan mayor in Aydın province, Eskişehir and Tekirdağ were added. But now, strong women manage places with a population of over 300,000, such as Adana's Seyhan, Denizli's Merkezefendi, İzmir's Karşıyaka, Konak, and Karabağlar, Kocaeli's İzmit, and Istanbul's Maltepe and Üsküdar. Your companions are managing them.

'WE OPPOSE THE MINDSET THAT IMPRISONS WOMEN AT HOME'

Tayyip Bey has a cabinet. He has 18 ministers in the cabinet. Among them, undoubtedly, the most important ministry, even if they have changed its name, is the Ministry of Family and Social Services. It is important for a woman to be in this, but having only one woman in that cabinet, and having her serve as the minister responsible for the family, shows the mentality exactly. We are facing a mentality that sees a woman as an individual if she is married, as part of the family if she is married, as an individual who needs to be supported if she is married, and does not see an unmarried woman, and even makes alliances with those who hold an outdated, centuries-old, or even prehistoric, cave-wall-era understanding like their alliance partners who say 'Single women should be claimed immediately.' CHP has 18 shadow ministers. 9 of them are women and 9 are men. Because if women are half of life, they will be half of politics. You will not look at it as 'You are a woman, you understand family and children.' The opposite of this is saying 'You don't understand foreign policy, labor and security, or internal affairs, culture and arts; you only understand family, you must look after children, you must look after your elderly, your sick, you must look after your husband.' This mentality is the mentality that imprisons women at home. We are against this.

'WE ARE DEVASTATED BY THE LOSS OF MANY WOMEN IN TURKEY!'

Women won on March 31. Winning is good, we are happy, but unfortunately, we are devastated and saddened every day by the loss of many women in Turkey. I have been serving in Parliament since 2011. In 2011, a law passed through Parliament. An international agreement passed. In 2014, the Istanbul Convention passed through Parliament. That day, all the deputies in Parliament had voted for it. I remember, with the warning and guidance of our female deputies, we, the CHP deputies, had voted by raising both our hands. After that date, the first and only decline in femicides was experienced very clearly in the year it was approved. This is not a coincidence.

'JUST TO WIN AN ELECTION....'

If I had a lucky charm and they asked 'who would you pin it on,' I would pin it on the AK Party for the Istanbul Convention. Tayyip Bey took that lucky charm I pinned and threw it in the trash one night. Because the Istanbul Convention meant that the state was firmly behind the woman, with its prosecutor, its judge, the Law No. 6284 it enacted, with what it would do from then on, with its police, from the deputy who enacted the law to the police who would encounter its first application, to the prosecutor and judge who would make the decision, the Istanbul Convention stood the state behind the woman and stood the state against the murderer who thought about committing violence against a woman or thought about murdering a woman. That's why it dropped so much that year. Then it stayed at low levels and then started to rise. Why? Because they opened the Istanbul Convention to debate. They said 'Let it be abolished.' There were discussions within the AK Party. Some women defended it, some remained silent. Most men did not want it. Then the outdated minds they wanted to form an alliance with made the abolition of the Istanbul Convention a condition. Just to be able to win an election, to get the votes of those bigots, those backward-minded people, those Salafi minds who would burn and destroy Parliament if they were in power alone, and also those who supposedly vote for him and say 'I slapped my wife. I got a restraining order,' he tells it in such a way that we see it on social media too. 'I wanted to discipline my daughter. They gave me a penalty,' he says. While the state was standing against all of these and the state was standing behind the women, they first by debating, then by withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention, and then by opening the right to alimony, which would mean attacking the Civil Code, to debate, they deprived women of the assurance given to them.

"THERE ARE SERIOUS PROBLEMS IN EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK"

Turkey is ranked 127th out of 146 countries in the 2024 Gender Inequality Index. I am ashamed to read the few countries ahead of us. According to the World Economic Forum report, Turkey is ranked 133rd out of 146 countries in women's labor force participation. This is also the reason why women experience poverty more severely than men. The insufficiency of education level, the increase in the workload of working women due to traditional roles, and the lack of practices that facilitate childcare. There are very serious problems in the application of equal pay for equal work. There is one way to eliminate all these problems at once. That is for a cadre, a mindset, a party that believes in the equality of women and men, in equal representation in politics, and that taking every step regarding women is the country's most critical modernization issue, to govern the country. And the name of that party is CHP.

'WE REACHED 1 MILLION 750 THOUSAND MEMBERS'

Very strong women spoke here a little while ago. Each of their stories is very valuable. But it is also very valuable that a CHP municipality, one of its projects, a mayor who believes in equality, is touching each of their stories on one hand. This party is the party of all women, seculars, religious people, those with uncovered hair, those with headscarves, the insecure, and the poor. CHP opened its doors wide for 28 days throughout February and called out. It said, 'We are setting out on a path. We are determining a presidential candidate. Let those who want to choose our candidate come and register with the party.' There was an incredible youth and women orientation in the party. While we were making this call, we were planning to increase our membership number, which was 1 million 520 thousand, to 1 million 600 thousand by the end of February and hold a primary election. February ended, the numbers were counted. While we were saying 80 thousand members would add strength to our strength, we reached 1 million 750 thousand members with 230 thousand new members.

'TODAY YOU WILL DETERMINE THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, TOMORROW THE PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES'

For this, we will elect our presidential candidate on March 23 with the momentum of our 1 million 750 thousand members rushing to the ballot box. The doors are open. The doors are open to women, youth, and all citizens. From now on, those who enter the doors of this party will have a say and will continue to have a say in the elections to be held where the most difficult decisions will be made. Today you will determine the presidential candidate, tomorrow you will determine the parliamentary candidates. You will be candidates yourselves. Together with the solidarity of women and egalitarian men, you will come to the most important positions. I invite all the women of Turkey to Turkey's spring, to the spring of democracy, to the democratic revolution on March 23. Come, vote, and make history. You will come and elect a president. You will bury all inequalities in history. To elect a president who will re-sign the Istanbul Convention and send it to Parliament, for equality, for the struggle, come, vote, and make history. I bow respectfully before all of you. Happy Women's Day. Women's day is the day of modern Turkey. We will raise modern Turkey together again."

News Source: 12punto