IKV organised panel entitled “Women’s Rights and Gender Equality in Turkey’s EU Accession Process” in cooperation with Okan University on 28 March 2018. The panel of which IKV Strategy and Business Development Director Gökhan Kilit delivered the opening speech, took place in the form of two sessions and a workshop. At the sessions in which IKV Secretary General Assoc. Prof. Çiğdem Nas moderated, Okan University International Relations Head of Department Assoc. Prof. Zeynep Alemdar, OXFAM Turkey Director Meryem Aslan, The Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey (KAGIDER) Board Member Itır Aykut, Dean of Koç University Faculty of Law Prof. Bertil Emrah Oder, Ece Öztan from Social Democracy Foundation and Assos. Prof. Sevgi Uçan Çubukçu from Istanbul University were the panelists.

At the beginning of the panel, IKV Secretary General Assoc. Prof. Çiğdem Nas stated that the women issue is part of the EU and gender equality is included in all of the EU policies. She underscored the importance of women getting freedom for this reason and gave the floor to the first panelist of the first session, Assos. Prof. Zeynep Alemdar.  Zeynep Alemdar started her speech by stating that gender equality should be handled in the EU context and expressed that gender equality is part of the Lisbon Treaty and the European Convention on Social Rights as well as the EU’s key documents. She underlined the fact that the women’s rights which were shaped through “equal pay for equal work” principle, have been moulding by the perspectives such as refugee crisis, Syrian women and the UN’s sustainable development goals during the last 10 years. While reminding that gender equality which is more on the agenda of the EU, used to be handled with regards to economic participation, she stated that from now on women participating in the politics is a good example for Turkey. Assos. Prof. Zeynep Alemdar continued her speech by giving statistics regarding women representation in Turkey. After having stated the rate of female employees in the public sector is not bad with 37 per cent, Zeynep Alemdar called attention to the fact that this rate drops to 11 per cent at the executive level.

The second panelist of the first session Prof. Bertil Emrah Oder stated that the political participation oriented reforms have been carried out within the scope of the Customs Union which has been in force since 1996 and that the greatest constitutional transformation since the Republic period happened in 2001. While reminding that new regulations aiming to strengthen the equality of women in the family were brought into the Civil Code at the same year, Oder touched upon the 2004 constitutional amendment and stated that obligations to convert action into equality were given to the government by setting forth not only juridical but also active equality. Oder noted that there had not been such significant gender equality emphasis until 2004 and touched upon what came ahead of 2004. She reminded that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights had been articulated into founding treaties and Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, Istanbul Convention, has been signed with the active participation of Turkey.

The outstanding topics of Oder’s speech were Turkey’s status as the first certifier country of Istanbul Convention and being a role model in the Balkans for the equality of women and men in addition to the Committee on Equality of Opportunity for Women and Men at Turkish Grand National Assembly established in 2009. Regarding what the EU has done in terms of gender mainstreaming since 2004, Prof. Oder expressed that regulations concerning employment and women’s participation in economy were generally put into practice whereas the same intensity could not be felt in social policy and political participation. However, the EU which has not been indifferent to violence against women throughout this period adopted a legally-binding directive related to the rights of violence victims. After having highlighted the tendency of not complying with the legislation in administrative practices and opposition in judicial attitudes in Turkey, Prof. Bertil Emrah Oder stated that laws are sometimes enforced in accordance with personal and cultural attitudes. Prof. Oder concluded her speech by reminding the difficulties Turkey encounters with the EU regarding the opening of the 23^rd chapter (Judiciary and Fundamental Rights) and the 24^th chapter (Justice, Freedom and Security) of the EU acquis.

The last panelist of the first session from Istanbul University Women’s Research and Education Centre Assoc. Prof. Sevgi Uçan Çubukçu delivered a speech on gender mainstreaming in the EU-Turkey relations. With regards to women’s movements in Turkey, Çubukçu enunciated that the 1980’s along with the 1990’s were the first wave and the 2000’s were the second wave of the women’s movements. In spite of the fact that discourses in Turkey-EU relations can sometimes be very tense, gender mainstreaming is influenced positively from this relation and the EU’s democratic society idea coincides with the demands of women’s movements in Turkey. After having mentioned the significance of the Europeanisation idea in Turkey for democratisation, human rights and gender mainstreaming, Assoc. Prof. Sevgi Uçan Çubukçu expressed that equality existed at the basis of Turkish Republic during its establishment. Although Turkey’s modernisation during the Republic period began with the promise of equality of women and men, this remained limited and could not be applied to public and private life since actual equality could not be realised. It was stated that the EU should make an effort to provide actual equality in a country where there are still deficiencies in the enforcement of regulations and women’s oppression at private space has become obvious since the 1970’s. After having emphasised the need for mentality transformation to achieve gender mainstreaming in Turkey, Assoc. Prof. Çubukçu ended her speech by reminding the need to approach the issue within social integrity and sustainability perspective.

Afterwards, the first panelist of the second session Dr. Ece Öztan from Social Democracy Foundation made a presentation entitled “Women’s Labour and Equality” related to dynamics in family and labour market. After having mentioned the equality of women and men as “incomplete revolution” defined by an American researcher Esping Andersen, Ece Öztan asserted that equality does not have its old popularity since everything’s posts have arisen. Öztan clarified that there are two opinions concerning this issue; whereas according to the first, none of defective work will be done by human beings and there is going to be no inequality of women and men thanks to Indusrty 4.0 and digitalisation, the second opinion is not that much optimistic. Despite there is a discourse focusing on motherhood, it was touched upon that this comes to light on integrated issues such as migrant mothers or hermit mothers, so feminism or gender mainstreaming are not discussed as separate issues. Öztan who shared the statistics on women employment and household in Turkey declared that there is a decreasing trend on household dimension and 17.5 per cent of population lives alone or with the non-nuclear families. Öztan emphasised that women have babies less and the first child bearing age that was 20-24 years old increased to 25-29 years old. However, Ece Öztan expressed that women are in charge of most of the housework and there is “poor old women problem” due to low pensions. Ece Öztan ended her presentation on equality paradigm by sharing the statistics of 34 per cent that represents women between 15 and 24 ages that are neither educated nor employed (NEET).

The second panelist of the session KAGIDER Board Member Itır Aykut began her speech by introducing the foundation. Aykut remarked attention to the fact that KAGIDER defends women’s empowerment at every domestic and foreign platform and added that this topic should not be touched upon only in every March. Moreover, Itır Aykut highlighted that there are prejudices in the labour market although progressive steps like flexible working became effective by legal legislations. Aykut who introduced KAGİDER’s “3E targets” -education, employment and entrepreneurship- in this area shared the statistics of leaving primary education in Turkey which is 13.5 per cent of which girls account for the majority. Similarly, in agricultural market that has 28.7 per cent female employment, informal employment is still 93 per cent. On the other hand, conditions are much better in services sector with female employment of 53 per cent. Itır Aykut illustrated KAGIDER’s works and projects in cooperation with different international, public and private organisations including the World Bank and Danone, ended her speech by highlighting the importance of government’s support regarding free day-care centres for mothers’ return to working life.

The last panelist of the session Oxfam Turkey Director Meryem Aslan talked about the international frameworks, Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which Turkey was one of the first certifier countries, European Convention on Human Rights, UN’s The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Declaration and Action Plan and İstanbul Convention. Meryem Aslan reminded Turkey’s gender equality commitments with or without the EU which bring multi-dimensional strategies with them. After having emphasised the fact that the UN’s sustainable development goals have come to the fore during the last years and one of the goals is gender equality, Oxfam Turkey Director Aslan touched also upon Turkey’s commitments within its G20 membership. Aslan who stated that Turkey ranked as the 131^st country among 144 countries on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report, argued that Turkey has a lot of things to learn not only from the EU but also from all of the world. Meryem Aslan ended her speech by expressing that Turkey’s improvements in gender equality might be realised with the help of political participation and investments in child/eldery care services. During the workshop after lunch, participants assessed the morning sessions and policy recommendations were presented to achieve equality of women and men along with gender mainstreaming.