A new report published on June 23 by the Hafiza Merkezi Berlin [Memory Centre Berlin] a human rights organisation focusing on rights, freedoms and the rule of law in Turkey and Europe, says the Turkish and Polish governments are using similar tactics to undermine the rights of women and LGBT groups, while Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention has encouraged other authoritarian leaders to follow suit.
“Turkey and Poland have recently come to the fore in European politics and attracted international attention with their striking parallels in terms of authoritarian, populist, and undemocratic regimes,” the report, entitled “The Istanbul Convention, Gender Politics and Beyond: Poland and Turkey”, said.
It added that the ruling parties in male-dominated Turkey and Poland have adopted similar policies, targeting the rights of minorities and women, fostering religious and conservative values, attacking the media and discrediting the rule of law.
The Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, is a human rights treaty intended to address violence against women and domestic violence. It was opened for signatures in May 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Turkey was the first country that ratified the treaty, but Islamist and conservative critics claimed that it undermined traditional family values and, ironically, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan then withdrew his country from the treaty, which will come into force on July 1.
Repeated calls for Turkey’s return to the convention have been dismissed by the government.
In both countries, the report notes, violence against women and LGBT groups are major problems while in Turkey femicides and in Poland abortion have become recent major hot topics.
“Both countries’ official strategy for preventing violence is family mainstreaming instead of recognising and adequately addressing the gendered dimension of violence,” Cemre Baytok, a human rights activist and the author of the report, told BIRN.
“In both countries, state officials, religious authorities, and conservative groups have supported each other in the drive to denounce the Istanbul Convention,” she added.
Baytok said one of the major targets of attacks on the Convention is the term “gender”, which both governments say threatens societal values, targets the family and causes moral deterioration and most significantly, promotes LGBTI+ identities.
“They argue that their domestic law is sufficient and comprehensive enough to combat violence and they also announced that they were working on an alternative international treaty to the convention,” Baytok added.
While both countries’ governments have diminished the rights of women and other groups and have become more male-dominated than ever, the report notes that both countries still have strong women’s movements that take to the streets to protest over government measures that disadvantage women.
“During the most recent attacks on the Istanbul Convention in Poland, and later in Turkey, women’s organisations with different affiliations have reached out across divides to many groups both nationally and internationally, even including GONGOs [Governmental civil society organisations] to a certain extent, making an extra effort to convince everybody to keep the Convention in place – a struggle which appears to have attracted international attention,” the report said.
The report concluded that the EU should pursue relations with EU-member Poland and candidate member Turkey to encourage their adherence to democratic principles.
The report finally calls for international solidarity and for defence of human rights and the rule of law as well as calling on women and LGBT groups to claim ownership of the Convention as a global achievement.
“In a time when coming together is either dangerous or banned, and activism is clearly hit by the pandemic, women’s and LGBTI+ street protests still continue, taking their cue from the slogan ‘masculinity is more harmful than COVID’,” the report said.
