Turkish Forum

Category: Regions

  • Feature: Women in politics

    Feature: Women in politics

    Saturday, 13, Dec 2008 12:01

    On this day in 1918, women voted in a British general election for the first time.

    Ninety years later and things still aren’t rosy. Until 20 years ago women never made up more than five per cent of MPs in parliament. Now they’re 20 per cent. It’s an improvement, but it’s not exactly half-and-half.

    The UK has fewer female MPs than Cambodia. It comes 15th for representation in national parliaments compared to the other 27 EU member states. In a country that’s otherwise so progressive, why do we still have so few women MPs?

    “It’s not harder for women,” says Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat equality spokesperson. “It’s just harder for carers.”

    “The division of family duties in society is still very unequal. This is what we find all the time. Women get involved in politics in their twenties and then in their thirties they say ‘I’ll take time out’. But men don’t take that time out.”

    Ann Cryer, the Labour MP who dedicated herself to a campaign against forced marriage, agrees. “By its nature it’s difficult, because parliament is usually two or four hundred miles from where people live. That’s a problem for women with young children. It’s also a problem for men with young children but I think women have a stronger emotional attachment to their children than men have. That’s not to deride men, but you’re not going to get rid of that emotional attachment just like that.”

    You can see the truth of that by the culture of parliament as well as its composition. The old adage was that it had a shooting range, but no creche. No-one seems to know if that shooting range is still there, but there’s certainly no creche. Even today, the atmosphere in the House, and to a lesser extent in the halls and corridors of Westminster, retain an unmistakably male character.

    Swinson cites the response to Nick Clegg’s performance during this week’s prime minister’s questions as an example. Clegg got up to ask about a single mother who came to his surgery as an example of lower-income groups facing criminal penalties for being unable to pay back money given to them mistakenly in tax credits. He probably wasn’t thinking about the interview he gave to Piers Morgan nearly a year ago in which he admitted sleeping with about 30 women. MPs were. He only managed to say: “This week a single mother came to my surgery in Sheffield…” before someone on the other benches shouted: “Thirty-one”. MPs laughed for a good long time.

    “I was appalled they started laughing and applauding,” says Swinson. “I know he made those ill-judged comments a year ago, but you hear the phrase single mother and the first thing you think is sex? And then I thought – if this room wasn’t 80 per cent male would it be the same reaction? It was puerile. And puerile comes from the Latin word for ‘boy’.”

    Some observers also find something a little masculine about the way parliament is set out. Call it over-analysing, but there are a few people who think that represents a masculine way of doing things; a politics based on conflict rather than consensus.

    “I think it’s significant,” says Katherine Rike, director of women’s rights group The Fawcett Society. “Most new administrations [such as Scotland or Wales] have chosen not to construct their parliament in that way – they’re circular. We’re trying to fit women into an institutional design which is very masculine and there are limits to how much can change within that complex.”

    “It’s adversarial,” Cryers agrees. “And I think it’s more difficult for women to cope with that adversarial nature. It took me a year or two to feel sufficiently confident to stand up and speak without notes and just talk. I did find it hard at first because I’m a naturally quiet person and when you’re speaking in the Commons people will just shout at you.”

    It’s tempting to draw a conclusion about the link between our old building and our shoddy ranking in the international league table of women’s representation, but things are rarely that simple. Whatever the reasons, women are still facing a mountain when they decide to go into politics.

    “I’ve been on the Council of Europe where you sit down in a semi-circle with a proper desk and water and a microphone. It’s a more civilised way of doing things,” Cryer says.

    “But I’m not going to knock our parliament. It’s the best job in the world. I hope women will still feel they have a place in it. It’s so important women feel they can get in there.

    “My grandmother worked with the Suffragettes. She gave a great chunk of her life up for that and I think what she did is just now coming to fruition. So whoever’s reading this please do try for parliament. Don’t lose sight of it. It’s important.”

    Ian Dunt

    Source: www.politics.co.uk, 13 Dec 2008


  • Europe: Rights watchdog wants more protection for women

    Europe: Rights watchdog wants more protection for women

    Strasbourg, 25 Nov. (AKI) – Europe’s top human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe on Tuesday urged national legislatures to pass laws to protect women from domestic violence. The watchdog’s parliamentary assembly (PACE) issued a statement to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

    “Too many women in Europe are battered and killed by their partners or former partners, simply because they are women,” PACE President Lluis Maria de Puig said in the statement.

    “No Council of Europe member state is immune. It is time to put a stop to this repeated, widespread violation of human rights. National parliaments must pass the requisite laws.

    “At European level, there is an urgent need to strengthen protection for victims, prosecute those who perpetrate violence and take measures to prevent it,” he added.

    De Puig urged the Council of Europe to draft a convention to combat the most serious and widespread forms of violence against women, in particular domestic violence and forced marriages.

    The United Nations General Assembly in 1999 designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and invited governments, international organizations and NGOs to organise activities to raise public awareness of the problem on that day.

    Women’s activists have marked the day against violence since 1981. It was created after the brutal assassination in 1960, of the three Mirabal sisters, political activists in the Dominican Republic, on the orders of Dominican ruler Rafael Trujillo.

    PACE is made up of elected members of parliament from Council of Europe member states, as well as from their opposition parties.

    It only has the power to investigate, recommend and advise but its recommendations on issues such as human rights have significant weight with European Union institutions including the European Parliament.

    The Council of Europe, created in 1948, has 47 member states with some 800 million citizens. It is not part of the European Union.

    Source:  www.adnkronos.com, 13 December 2008

  • Turkish universities to open Armenian language departments

    Turkish universities to open Armenian language departments

    Trakya and Nevşehir universities will accept a total of 40 students in the department.

    In a move to contribute to Turkish-Armenian ties, Turkey’s Higher Board of Education, or YÖK, will open Armenian language and literature departments at Turkish universities, the Anatolia News Agency reported Friday.

    Trakya and Nevşehir universities will accept a total of 40 students in the department. Boğaziçi University has been teaching Armenian language since last year.

  • Turkish Filmmakers Visited The Civilitas Foundation

    Turkish Filmmakers Visited The Civilitas Foundation

    A group of Turkish filmmakers visited The Civilitas foundation on December 4. Ten young filmmakers, visiting Armenia to participate in the Second Turkish- Armenian Workshop on “Cinema as Means of Cross-Border Dialogue and Mutual Understanding”.

    The workshop, initiated by the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, was a partnership between the Yerevan festival and the Anadolu Kültür Association of Turkey, as well as the Armenian Writers Union.

    The Turkish filmmakers and the organizers met with Civilitas founder Vartan Oskanian, and members of the Civilitas staff.

    Mr. Oskanian welcomed the initiative and spoke of the importance of such initiatives.
    He noted that the purpose of the workshop is to promote civil and cultural dialogue between Armenia and Turkey via means of cinema, encouraging cooperation and mutual recognition among Armenian and Turkish professionals.

    “There is a great deal of misunderstanding and mistrust between Turkey and Armenia. And if the governments of both countries are seriously thinking of normalization of relations, the civil societies in both countries should push the process forward.What better medium than cinema to bring people together,” Mr. Oskanian said.

    The Turkish filmmakers, many of whom already have working ties with their Armenian colleagues, said that one of their main goals of the cooperation is a possibility to work together on a joint project.
    “You, the filmmakers, should be able to explain to your government by means of cinema, that for the development of the region, for the normalization of the relations between the two people, opening the border is vital” Mr. Oskanian explained.

  • After five centuries, women finally step inside the Spanish Riding School

    After five centuries, women finally step inside the Spanish Riding School

    Sojurner Morell was named after a women’s rights campaigner. And, at 17, she has landed a blow of her own for equality after being accepted into Vienna’s famed equestrian centre. Tony Paterson met her

    Thursday, 11 December 2008

    Briton Sojurner Morell, left, and Austrian Hannah Zeitlhofer, right, are the first women to be admitted to the Spanish Riding School of Vienna

    Dressed up in the skintight breeches, knee-high leather boots, frock coat and 19th-century commissionaire-style cap worn by pupils at the world’s oldest riding school, Sojurner Morell, a 17-year-old British horsewoman, looks decidedly butch.

    Yet there are ancient and firmly entrenched reasons for the teenager’s masculine appearance. She and her 21-year-old Austrian colleague, Hannah Zeitlhofer have secured a sudden reputation for breaking one of Austria’s last and most enduring taboos. They have become the first women to be accepted to Vienna’s elite, internationally renowned and hitherto male-dominated Spanish Riding School – a 481-year-old institution as famous and peculiar to this Alpine nation as Mozart.

    But being the first women to enter one of the last men-only bastions in Europe has exacted its inevitable sartorial price: “I guess they haven’t got round to designing a uniform for women yet,” admitted Sojurner. “Let’s face it, it hasn’t exactly been an issue at the school for about four hundred years.”

    Sojurner, whose name derives from the black 19th-century American abolitionist and women’s rights campaigner Sojurner Truth, doesn’t come across as a militant feminist activist. She was besotted with horses as a child. She vividly remembers riding around on the back of ponies in the paddock behind the family home in Saratoga Springs, New York, aged two. Her father comes from Birmingham but the family moved to America when she was a child.

    “When you grow up with horses, you get to know about the Spanish Riding School almost automatically,” she said. “I can’t even remember how or when I first heard of it but for me it was always an ideal, the ultimate goal for anyone who loves horses.”

    She first visited the Riding School two years ago while on a tour of Europe with her mother. She was so taken by the place and its elaborate displays of dressage performed by the schools’ legendary Lipizzaner horses, that she sent a letter of application in September last year just to try her luck.

    She was delighted when she received a reply inviting her to attend an interview. She had to compete against eight other candidates by demonstrating her riding skills to a board of examiners and she was astounded when she learnt the result. Only four candidates were accepted and she, along with Ms Zeitlhofer, who recently obtained a degree in equestrian science, were among them and women to boot.

    Horse riding is an activity in which women have been involved for centuries. Dressage, showjumping competitions and even village gymkhanas would be unthinkable with no female riders. Without them Black Beauty would doubtless never have been written. It seems extraordinary, therefore, that an institution like the Spanish Riding School has sustained a ban on women for so long.

    The cliches about the Teutonic world lagging behind the Anglo-Saxons sometimes ring true. Laws guaranteeing women equal rights only came into force in Germany in 1957 and it took until 1972 for the Swiss to give women the vote.

    Austria can hardly claim the status of most emancipated nation in the world either; Vienna’s Philharmonic Orchestra only hired a full-time female musician in 1997, after being subjected to massive public pressure to do so. And when it comes to horses, the nation is radically out of step with the English-speaking world. Austria is famous for its horsemeat sausages.

    Vienna’s Spanish Riding School embodied such conservatism for centuries. Founded back in 1527, its roots are in the military traditions dating as far back as Xenophon in ancient Greece and the horsemanship of the post-medieval age. Then, knights attempted to retain a battlefield role by shedding armour and learning to outwit their opponents through manoeuvrability and riding skill.

    The school is described as Spanish because of the Spanish horses that Austria’s ruling Hapsburg family imported in the 16th century. The horses gave rise to the famous Lipizzaner breed, a symbol of the country’s prowess during the Austro-Hungarian empire. The school specialises in training Lipizzaner stallions. It takes 15 years to become one of its chief riders and the skills required are easily as demanding as those needed to master a Stradivarious violin or helm an America’s Cup-winning yacht.

    The school is a magnet for tourists who flock to see its displays of classical dressage in the early 18th-century, pillared Winter Riding School building. Uniformed riders, clad in bicorne hats, period uniforms and immaculately polished boots salute in front of a portrait of the Austrian emperor, Charles VI, before performing on their white Lipizzaner stallions.

    It has taken a female manager to break the school’s male exclusivity. Early last year Elisabeth Gürtler, a Viennese society hostess and owner of the Sacher hotel next door, was appointed general director. An experienced businesswoman, she took over when the school was facing bankruptcy. Last January it had to cancel a tour to the US to cut spending. Part of Ms Gürtler’s remit has been to modernise the school and “make it more open”. She sees the decision to admit women as an entirely natural process. “Both men and women have to earn their keep and prove themselves nowadays, nobody is against this,” she says. Nobody ever ruled that women should never be admitted, “it just sort of ended up that way”.

    For Ms Morell and Ms Zeitlhofer, being the only women in the Riding School’s entourage of 21 riders has not been as problematic as expected. Their main difficulty is trying to mount a horse when its stirrups are set high. Both say their upper arms have not yet developed sufficient muscle to enable them to always complete the process alone. “We sometimes have to ask our male colleagues for a lift up,” says Ms Zeitlhofer, “That can be pretty annoying, because then everyone looks at you.”

    As first-year pupils or élèves, as the school calls them, both women are paid €700 (£610) a month and work a demanding eight-hour day that begins at 6 m. Riding lessons follow and students have to learn how to maintain perfect posture and lead with the reins. The rest of the working day is spent mucking out stables and grooming the horses. Both women say they encounter absolutely no resentment from the male riders and most are “totally nice”. Andreas Hausberger, 43, a chief rider, says he is thrilled to have women at the school: “Thank God we are not living in the Middle Ages any more.”

    Yet the school has still to sort out the dress issues. The difficulties for women presented by the masculine uniform of frock coat and peaked cap are nothing compared to those presented by the uniform worn by its troupe of still exclusively male chief riders. Their parade dress is a coffee-coloured riding coat buttoned up to the neck, knee-high boots and an 18th-century Captain Hornblower-style bicorne hat. “There are a couple of questions about that,” admitted Ms Gürtler, “But we have a few years to think about it.”

    Source:  www.independent.co.uk, 11 December 2008

  • Chingiz Aitmatov’s Lifelong Journey Toward Eternity

    Chingiz Aitmatov’s Lifelong Journey Toward Eternity

    Chingiz Aitmatov

    December 12, 2008
    By Tyntchtykbek Tchoroev

     

    This week marks the culmination of a yearlong celebration in Kyrgyzstan of the writer and thinker Chingiz Aitmatov, who died on June 10, a few months short of his 80th birthday.

    Aitmatov is revered for building a bridge between the world of traditional Kyrgyz folklore and modern Eurasian literature. His writings illuminate the challenges that faced the peoples of the Soviet Union both before and after its demise, and his own life is an integral part of that broader turbulent pattern.

    He was born on December 12, 1928, and brought up in the village of Sheker in the Talas region of northern Kyrgyzstan. He studied in Jambul (in present-day Kazakhstan), Frunze (now Bishkek), and Moscow. He witnessed Josef Stalin’s purges of the 1930s firsthand: his father Torokul, a prominent political figure, was arrested in 1937 and executed the following year as an alleged enemy of the people and counterrevolutionary.

    It was only after Kyrgyzstan became independent that Torokul Aitmatov’s remains were found, together with those of other prominent intellectuals and politicians. He was given a state funeral in August 1992. Chyngyz Aitmatov named the new cemetery near Bishkek for victims of Stalinism “Ata Beyit,” or “The Graveyard Of Our Fathers.”

    Some superficial critics of Aitmatov argue that he was simply serving the communist system. They point to the numerous honors and awards — including the Order of Lenin and Hero of Socialist Labor — that he received for his work.

    But Aitmatov was equally respected outside the USSR: He received India’s Jawaharlal Nehru award, and was named a member of the World Academy of Science and Arts and the European Academy of Science, Arts, and Literature. His works were translated into more than 170 languages and sold more than 60 million copies worldwide, showing that their appeal transcends communist ideology.

    Changing From Within

    Aitmatov can be compared with Voltaire, the 18th-century French Enlightenment writer who revolted against the old system while enjoying all the benefits it had to offer. The intellectual war against authoritarianism found expression not only in the works of openly dissident writers such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but in a milder and more sophisticated way in Aitmatov’s novels.

    As a student in the then-Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, I could not find Solzhenitsyn’s main works in public libraries. But we could and did discuss Aitmatov’s easily available works relentlessly, deciphering the hidden meanings between the lines. How can anyone argue that the writings of exiled dissidents were the only effective weapon against totalitarianism when they remained unattainable to most readers?

    The Czech writer and playwright Karel Capek coined the word “robot” to describe a machine that resembles a human being; Aitmatov resurrected the old Kyrgyz word “mankurt,” meaning a robot-like human stripped of his intellect by a process of physical brainwashing imposed by a brutal, oriental tyranny.

    Aitmatov in 1963

    Defying the ideology of mature socialism that promoted and glorified the merger of the USSR’s smaller ethnic groups with the Russian people as their only path to a “bright future,” albeit one in which their sense of national identity was lost, Aitmatov wrote a novel about a Kazakh woman, Mother Naiman, who begs her “mankurt” son to remember his father’s name, his ancestors, and his personal identity.

    Aitmatov’s famous predecessor Makhmud Kashghari, born near Lake Issyk-Kul in the 11th century, wrote a famous monograph on the Turkic languages (in Arabic), challenging the acknowledged supremacy of the Arabic language by likening Arabic and the Turkic languages to two horses galloping neck-and-neck.
    Aitmatov repeated the same challenge in the 1980s, urging the Kirghiz Soviet authorities to treat the Kyrgyz language with dignity and to elevate its official position to that of Russian, which one communist leader in Kirghizia at the time described as “the second mother tongue” of the Kyrgyz people.

    At that time, because of the emphasis placed on the “leading role” of the Russian language, there were only a few schools in Frunze with instruction in Kyrgyz. But on September 23, 1989, at the height of Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s famous “perestroika,” the Kyrgyz language was declared the sole state language of the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, with Russian downgraded to the status of the lingua franca in a multiethnic society.

    Hero To Kyrgyz Nation

    Some of Aitmatov’s early works from the 1950s, written in Kyrgyz, incurred harsh condemnation from his enemies. One of his critics lambasted his early love story “Jamiyla” — which the French poet Louis Aragon described as “the world’s most beautiful love story” — arguing that it was immoral to praise the heroine, who fell in love with someone else while her husband was courageously fighting Nazi Germany during World War II.

    Aitmatov’s subsequent decision to write in Russian undoubtedly furthered his career. So too did his willingness to promote the Soviet authorities’ slant on specific developments. In 1977, two years after the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, he published an article entitled “There Is No Alternate To Helsinki,” in which he affirmed: “We are changing the world, and the world is changing us.”

    In October 1986, Aitmatov founded the famous Issyk-Kul Forum, which brought intellectuals from the Soviet bloc and the West together at a lakeside resort to discuss major global challenges face to face. He served as an adviser to Gorbachev during the perestroika years, and after Kyrgyzstan became independent as Kyrgyz ambassador to UNESCO, EU, NATO, and the Benelux countries.

    In 1989, I was part of a group of young Kyrgyz historians that organized to challenge official Soviet historiography. We appealed to Aitmatov, at that time chairman of the Union of Writers of Kirghizia, and to his deputy, the poet Asan Jakshylykov, to allow us to hold the founding conference of our Young Kyrgyz Historians Association in the conference hall of the Union of Writers. And despite increasing pressure from the central authorities, they said yes, and thereby contributed to the emergence of a new generation of Kyrgyz historians.

    Throughout his life, Aitmatov preserved his love for his fellow men, and for nature and the animal world. His last novel, titled “When The Mountains Fall Down: The Eternal Bride,” was written in 2005 as a final appeal to his people to preserve the beauty of the Celestial Mountains (Tengir-Too in Kyrgyz, Tian-Shan in Chinese), which the Kyrgyz have traditionally regarded as sacred. The two heroes of the novel, a journalist named Arsen Samanchin and an indigenous snow leopard (Jaa Bars), both become victims of international poaching in a tale of the perils of the greedy and careless exploitation of the environment.

    Tyntchtykbek Tchoroev (Chorotegin) is the director of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service. The views expressed in this commentary are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL