Urun Güner is a Fellow of the U.S. State Department’s Legislative Education and Practice Program, working in coordination with Vital Voices. She is Project Coordinator of Flying Broom, a leading Turkish NGO focused on democratization, the development of civil society, and awareness raising about gender issues.

Before the ratification of CEDAW, what was the climate like in Turkey regarding women’s rights and the status and number of women’s organizations?

The modern women’s movement in Turkey has a history of about 35 years, beginning in 1977 with the creation of the first women’s organization, the Progressive Women’s Association, of which my mother, Halime Güner, was a founder. With 33 branches and over 50,000 members, the group organized campaigns and demonstrated in the streets. In 1979, the year that CEDAW was introduced at the UN, I was only one-year-old, and the main effort of the Progressive Women’s Association was to open day care centers in Turkey. It was not only the only women’s organization at the time, but one of the few civil society groups that existed.

In 1980, a military coup occurred in my country, and the Turkish Armed Forces ruled the state for the next three years. Under the military, there was no democracy, and civil society would not grow until the mid-1990s. The Turkish Constitution was changed after the coup, and remains today. Though it was written by the army, and was not a democratic constitution, there was one provision, Article 90, which would become a critical tool for NGOs –we depend upon it.

This article states that international conventions [to which Turkey is a party] take precedence over national laws if there is any conflict between the two. This also means that the state must adjust its laws in order to comply with international treaties, and has been a very important mechanism for women’s organizations in our advocacy.

How did CEDAW come to be ratified in Turkey?

In Turkey, international conventions and activities are very effective in influencing national movements for reform. The importance of the United Nations is very much felt in Turkey, and our state is party to all UN conventions. In 1985, CEDAW was signed and ratified in parliament with great help from international lobbying efforts and the advocacy of the few women’s organizations in the state. At this time there were also some women ministers in the government. Though there were some reservations made on the treaty, parliament ratified CEDAW as well as the Optional Protocol, which was signed in 1993 and ratified in 2001. The Optional Protocol is especially significant because it allows CEDAW to apply to individual women, and enables individuals to petition the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

What was the significance of ratification at the time?

The ratification of CEDAW was perhaps most significant because it meant that Turkey would be subject to the review and recommendations of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women every three years. These review sessions would consider reports and recommendations submitted by NGOs, [as well as the mandatory government reports] and would be critical to achieving reform for women’s rights.

In the early 1990s, the Turkish people were starting to learn a whole new vocabulary, including concepts like liberalization and democratization. Our civil society grew greatly in the mid-1990s, and the women’s movement was influenced particularly by the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995.

Beijing was in many ways the starting point. My mother had traveled to Beijing with fellow women’s advocates, and felt the solidarity of women’s organizations from around the world. This solidarity encouraged her, and with the support of a small grant from a group in the Netherlands, our NGO, Flying Broom, was created in 1996. About 80 percent of women’s NGOs in Turkey were founded after Beijing –the women’s struggle and movement was really born.

In what ways has CEDAW been an effective instrument for reform in Turkey?

With the help of CEDAW as an advocacy tool for women’s organizations, we have changed the civil and penal codes in my country, ensuring that women’s equality is now guaranteed in law. In 2002, the civil code was amended to state that the husband is no longer the head of the family, and that spouses have equal rights and decision-making power. Women were also given the right to seek employment without asking their husbands for permission.

As I mentioned, the country review sessions for signatories to CEDAW, held by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, are of great importance. In 2003, Flying Broom and other organizations held the largest meeting of women’s NGOs in our capital,  Ankara. In this meeting, we brought together women from diverse political perspectives, including Islamists, feminists, even Islamist feminists. For the first time, these groups gathered around one common point: we were all women. During this meeting, we discussed critical areas like women’s health, political participation, discrimination and domestic violence. We then produced a report on behalf of women’s NGOs to be presented in 2005 when Turkey was up for review at the UN. Our report included 35 recommendations for our country. Among these recommendations, we included suggested changes to the national penal code, such as criminalizing marital rape and removing patriarchal concepts such as chastity, honor, shame and decency from the penal code.

Following the review session in New York, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women adopted our recommendations and submitted them to the state of Turkey. With much advocacy and the strength of the Committee’s recommendations behind us, 30 of the 35 changes we advocated for were made to our penal code.

These changes included the reclassification of sexual crimes against women as crimes against individuals, instead of crimes against society, recognizing women as distinct individuals. The changes that were rejected included the outlawing of discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation, as well as the use virginity tests, which are still permitted as evidence in judicial cases.

Around this time, Article 10 was added to our constitution, declaring that women and men are equal citizens and the state needs to ensure this equality. At the time, the women’s organizations campaigning for these changes had also suggested an amendment that said the state needs to use positive discrimination (affirmative action) until this equality is achieved –this suggestion was not taken by the state, however. While CEDAW has been an important tool, and continues to be, there remain many improvements to be made in Turkey.

Which areas present the greatest challenge to women’s rights in Turkey, and how do international conventions and bodies support efforts to protect these rights?

Violence against women is the most serious issue facing women in my country today. As recently as June of this year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in a historic decision that the state of Turkey had failed to protect a woman from domestic violence. This was the first time that the court had made such a decision, and it showed that the Turkish judiciary did not have adequate mechanisms to protect the abused woman, and the police did not respond as they should have. After this case, the penal code was adjusted to protect women from domestic abuse, requiring the police to safeguard a victim and provide protective orders against abusers.

In the last few years, violence against women in the form of honor killings has increased dramatically. The importance of international conventions and the attention of the international community are critical for the protection of women’s rights in Turkey, especially concerning violence against women. The progress that we have made since ratifying CEDAW, and since the Beijing conference that led to the growth of women’s organizations, is definitely significant, but there remains much work to be done, and we count on international conventions such as CEDAW to serve as important advocacy tools.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), informally known as the Treaty for the Rights of Women, is an international instrument for governments, activists, advocates and citizens joined in a global movement towards the full realization and practice of women’s rights.

Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, the Treaty has since been ratified by 186 nations as the preeminent treaty acknowledging the comprehensive rights of women as fundamental human rights. In defining discrimination against women, the Treaty includes any restriction or exclusion, made on the basis of sex, which has as its purpose or effect a denial of the full recognition and exercise of a woman’s fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil, or any other sphere.

CEDAW uniquely addresses prejudice as a social construct with systemic and systematic consequences, citing social and cultural patterns of conduct based on perceived inferiority or superiority as root causes that perpetuate discrimination against women.  Written in the progressive spirit that was later echoed by the historic 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, the Treaty urges that women and men recognize and remedy a reality that permits socially constructed gender roles to dictate the experience and opportunity afforded an individual.

The Treaty is a decisive call for the promise of equal opportunity to be practically extended to women in areas of political and public life, education, employment, health care, economic and social rights, as well as in marriage and family relations. In distinguishing de facto equality from de jure equality, the Treaty seeks to engage signatories as partners in an active movement to realize women’s rights, promoting concrete measures to be taken by states parties in an effort to accelerate equality between men and women.

Currently, only the United States, Sudan, Somalia, Iran and three other countries have not ratified CEDAW.  A signatory since President Jimmy Carter signed the treaty in 1979, the U.S. has been at an impasse in Congress since then, and despite several attempts, the Treaty for the Rights of Women remains unratified. The Obama Administration has declared ratification of CEDAW a priority. Failure to ratify has often undermined American credibility in its rebuke of human rights abuses abroad and calls for women’s human rights.

Following their ratification of the Treaty, various countries across the world have taken action based on CEDAW in efforts to empower women and legitimize and enforce their rights.

Nicaragua, Jordan, Egypt and Guinea are among other nations that have seen significant increases in literacy rates after improving access to education for women and young girls.

Colombia has, since ratification, criminalized domestic violence and required protection for victims.

Ukraine, Nepal, Thailand and the Philippines are among other states that have passed legislation to address sex trafficking.

Uganda, South Africa, Brazil and others have incorporated provisions of the Treaty into their constitutions and domestic legal codes.

India developed national guidelines on workplace sexual assault after the Supreme Court found that CEDAW required such protections.

Vital Voices Global Partnership stands with hundreds of NGOs in support of U.S. ratification of the Treaty, so that our country, long respected as an advocate and example of human rights, may lend its full support and credibility to its commitment to ensure the human rights of women across the world.

If you are interested in supporting CEDAW, here are two ways that you can express your support.

Working Group on CEDAW

Physicians for Human Rights