An Armenian Woman Running For Mayor in Turkey
Turkey has been experiencing almost a year of constant tension and the situation only seems to be getting more surreal. Everyone is always asking about what's going wrong here, but I wanted to share a piece of positive change happening right now in Istanbul, specifically on the Princes' Islands (Adalar in Turkish), an archipelago in the Sea of Marmara off the Asian coast of Istanbul.
Adalar (pop. ~16,000) has always been a cosmopolitan melting pot of Turkish society and continues to be so. There are people from all over Turkey and from all different ethnic and religious groups who call the islands home. It is a place where the Muslims put up banners celebrating Christian and Jewish holidays and vice versa, and where people from different walks of life live side by side.
On March 30, 2014, there will be local elections held all over Turkey to elect municipal (Büyükşehir Belediyesi) and city (Belediye) mayors, as well as municipal and city councils. Turkey has a very centralized political system and government, so it's a very top-down hierarchy. Even the candidates for local elections are appointed from the central party administration, regardless whether the candidate lives in that area or not.
There is a new party in Turkey called Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP, the People's Democratic Party), which is an umbrella party for a variety of liberal and leftist parties and organizations. We have come together to try and give people an alternative to the centralized, male-dominated authoritarian rule we are now subject to. It is in our party bylaws to have equal representation of men and women as candidates and in the party administration, whereas the ruling party (AKP) only has 1% women candidates and the main opposition parties have less than 5% each (Source: http://www.ka-der.org.tr).
In Adalar, we have responded by putting forth an all-female ticket for city mayor and council. Not only are we all women and live on the islands, but we have Muslims and Christians, Turks, Armenians, Greeks and even a foreign-born woman (American from Texas) on the ticket for city council, and our candidate for mayor, Kayuş Çalıkman Gavrilof, is of Armenian origin.
What makes us even more different is that our party (HDP) is concerned with a bottom-up approach to politics where all the power is concentrated locally, in the hands of the people we represent. This is truly a revolutionary approach to politics in highly centralized, authoritarian Turkey where all of the decisions, even the local ones, are made in Ankara, the capital city.
We know Turkey is going through a difficult transition period right now from “state knows best” authoritarianism to hopefully a more open, democratic future. We hope to be part of the solution to ending the darkness by bringing a ray of hope to light the way for everyone regardless of their background.
* Candidate for Adalar City Council from the HDP.