Hafza Girdap is the Executive Director and Spokesperson of Advocates of Silenced Turkey (AST), organizing and participating in parallel panel sessions with the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). She is the Co-Founder of Set Them Free, a Volunteer Member of Amnesty International, and an international speaker who has addressed the UNGA, UNCSW, and World Affairs Council Peace Conference on the ongoing human rights violations occurring in Turkey.
This interview was first conducted in 2022 and the original conversation was edited for clarity. Veris Media Group LLC has acquired the rights to this story and subsequent updates, and has received authorization for its publication.
In 2016, an attempted coup d’état by Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) occurred between July 15, 2016 and July 16, 2016. The events unfolded when a faction of the TSK, identifying as the Peace at Home Council, cited a disintegration of secularism, violations of democratic institutions, human rights abuses, and Turkey’s loss of credibility on the international stage as reasons for the coup d’état. In addition, there were rising concerns amongst Turkish citizens that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was instituting an authoritarian regime, a clear violation of Kemalist ideology. According to reports from the BBC, prior to the events of 2016, President Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) integrated political Islamism into public life, asserted control over the media, and renounced free speech.
The coup d’état, despite international support from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, ultimately failed to seize control of any targets. The remaining Turkish Armed Forces and civilians loyal to President Erdogan were able to overwhelm the Peace at Home Council. In the early morning hours of July 16, 2016, following chaotic bloodshed and widespread destruction, the remaining forces surrendered, and government security forces regained control of political and military installations. The exact number of casualties and losses remains largely unconfirmed, but according to Al Jazeera, there were at least 251 people killed and over 2,200 people injured during the short-lived coup d’état.
Immediately after the Peace at Home Council was defeated, President Erdogan launched what the New York Times referred to as a ‘counter-coup’ against Turkey; “[…] Mr. Erdogan will become more vengeful and obsessed with control than ever, exploiting the crisis not just to punish mutinous soldiers but to further quash whatever dissent is left in Turkey.” The Turkish government blamed Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Muslim scholar and former ally of President Erdogan, for the coup d’état. In the aftermath, President Erdogan declared all ‘dissidents’ as members of the Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETO). Despite Gülen’s public condemnation of the coup d’état, the Turkish government conducted a series of purges and asset seizures in both the public and private sectors.
These purges are ongoing, accumulating to 10% of Turkey’s public sector employees being dismissed, detained, or suspended by government decrees. These public sector figures also account for affected members of the Turkish Armed Forces. Purged employees are infinitely impeded from seeking future employment opportunities in the public sector, which has culminated in rising levels of destitution. In addition, media organizations, educational institutions, and places of worship have declared ‘enemies of the state,’ if the government determines or suspects ties to the Hizmet Movement.
The private sector fared no better from economic purges, with the government confiscating business assets of more than a thousand companies and entrusting the entities to receivers; the New York Times reports that “[…] critics say that many companies have been sold at deep discounts to friends of Mr. Erdogan, and that others are now run by incompetent loyalists.” According to Les Echos, “The total value of the companies and assets seized amounts to at least 50 to 60 billion dollars.” For the companies in the private sector that survived the purge, a government blacklist of 300,000 people caused their products and services to be subjected to boycotts.
As mentioned, human rights abuses were a contributing factor to the coup d’état attempt by the Peace at Home Council. According to Human Rights Watch, “[…] The most recent official government study found that close to 40 percent of women have suffered physical and/or sexual violence during their lives.” This number already exceeds those of Europe and the United States, but does not provide a complete or accurate picture of violence against women in Turkey. As Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey Director at Human Rights Watch, points out, “[…] domestic violence cases only become visible once a woman goes to the police and lodges a complaint, or when women attempt to get a divorce.” She goes on to explain that this is when “violence often explodes.”
President Erdogan has been a vocal opponent of gender equality. As reported by Hürriyet Daily News, President Erdogan announced, “[…] You cannot bring women and men into equal positions; that is against nature because their nature is different.” He further went on to state that Islam defines a position for women in society, Motherhood. This constructs a government undermining of combating gender-based violence, decrying women as second-class citizens, inferior and/or subordinate to men.
In 2022, we interviewed Hafza Girdap, Executive Director and Spokesperson for Advocates of Silenced Turkey (AST), about the growing violence against women.
Cassandra Skolnick:
“The violence against women in Turkey is steadily worsening since the failed coup d’état attempt in 2016 by the Peace at Home Council. We have witnessed increasing numbers of reported cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, and femicide, and of course, this does not account for the high percentages of cases that go unreported. Activists and women’s rights groups have blamed it on Mr. Erdogan’s shift towards conservative policymaking, while others blame politicized Islam. Can you take a moment to speak about these acts of violence and why it’s a worsening issue?”
Hafza Girdap:
“Kofi Annan, a former Secretary General of the United Nations, once said that the most vulnerable victims of conflicts are women and children, and it’s not by coincidence. The best way for an enemy, dictator, or oppressor to get to the target group is to attack their most sensitive points, and women and children are in this group. Women and children are the vital point, the sore spot, for communities. If you want to dehumanize or degrade society, you attack women and children.
“So, the Turkish government was very good at this strategy. They targeted women and children. They dehumanized this specific society, the Gülen movement. But, it was not limited to the Gülen moment. There was Ayse Ogretmen. She was a symbolic figure. She was a Kurdish woman, not affiliated with the Gülen movement, and she joined a TV show, a very famous TV show, by phone and said ‘…don’t let kids die in the southern part of Turkey.’ She was talking about Kurdish kids. She was not a Gülen movement volunteer and she was arrested. She was pregnant and gave birth in the jail.
“So, you see that the regime is targeting all the dissidents by first attacking their women and children because when they do that, they are degrading, weakening their enemies, their targets.”
Cassandra Skolnick:
“There was a bill proposed in January 2020 that would legitimize child marriage and rape in the country. According to The EurAsian Times, the bill “[…] would give men suspended sentences for child sex offences if the two parties get married and the age difference between them is less than 10 years.” Simultaneously, we have heard reports of Turkey dismissing reports of domestic violence and sexual assault. We already know that Mr. Erdogan is a staunch opponent of gender equality, but why has there not been a larger outcry from the international community?”
Hafza Girdap:
“The political Islamist approach has been very effective because there is a specific code of law regarding women’s rights and violence against women. It was based on the Istanbul Convention which was adopted by Turkey. There were a lot of countries that signed under that Istanbul Convention. The Istanbul Convention, which Turkey undersigned, was integrated into the domestic law and there are a handful of articles in that convention regarding the penalties for violence against women. But it’s not being implemented because the regime very smartly attacked at the convention regarding its LGBT article. The government’s narrative asserted that ‘the convention directly challenges our core values, religious beliefs, or cultural traditions.’ So the society hasn’t adopted, hasn’t accepted the convention, so it’s easy for the regime not to implement the rule of law. The religious approach is very influential here because according to the Islamic understanding, transsexuality or transgender issues are not allowed in the faith of Islam.
The femicide cases have drastically increased in Turkey because the criminal minds know that they’re going to be detained, but then released; they’re not going to be staying in jail for a long time because the law is not implemented, which means they have some power in their crimes. Husbands, fathers, or somebody just randomly attacks a woman because they know that the penalty will not be that drastic.
According to a data set, the number of people who say that women have the same rights as men has drastically declined since 2005 and since 2005 there has been a huge decrease. This is the mindset in this society, so it’s not hard for the officials to not implement the laws because people believe that it’s okay. There is another data set regarding the understanding that men can beat their wives. Since 2005, it has also increased. So if the mindset in the society, if these people are not trained in terms of the rights in a democracy, then it’s very easy for the leaders to manipulate this society when they don’t implement the laws. There is nobody to criticize this government.”
When this article was originally published, Advocates of Silenced Turkey (AST) estimated that approximately 17,000 women were being detained by the Turkish government. By the end of August 2017, “[…] 668 children under the age of six,” of which “[…] 149 of these children were infants under a year old,” were being detained in prisons with their mothers. The We Will Stop Femicide Platform also reported in February 2018, that 47 women were murdered by men in a period of only 28-days. An updated AST Report in 2019 revealed that “[…] 540,000 individuals had been detained since the coup attempt on grounds of alleged affiliation or connection with the Gulen movement.” This number includes 780 children under six years of age who were being detained in prison with their mothers.
Veris Media Group LLC will be conducting updated coverage and investigative reporting in April 2024, including a follow-up interview with Hafza Girdap on the ongoing issues in Turkey.