Feminists' Dilemma: With or Without the State?

AJWS ISSN 1225-9276 13 Ⓒ 2011

Asian Center for Women’s Studies; Ewha Womans University Press

http://acws.ewha.ac.kr

Feminists’ Dilemma—With or Without the State?Violence against Women and Women’s Shelters in

Turkey1

Şule TOKTAŞ and Cagla DINER

Abstract

This article aims to describe the achievements of the women’s move-ment in the struggle against domestic violence in Turkey and the points of contention between the state and feminists regarding this issue. Our goal in analyzing the Turkish case of violence against women is to reflect on how women’s organizations work with the state; what they demand from it; and how they respond to the com-plex situations and dilemmas of state funded women’s shelters. The article is based on field research; we used techniques of participant observation at annual congresses organized by women’s organi-zations specialized in fighting violence against women and in-depth interviews with feminist activists, volunteers and social workers at women’s shelters. It describes the experiences of feminists in Tur-key, who are in the position of receiving support from and working closely with the state in running women’s shelters.

Keywords

Turkey; violence against women; women’s movement; social work-ers; feminism; women’s shelters

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Introduction The feminist movement has from time to time encountered the di-lemma of either staying outside the sphere of the state to preserve its integrity and independence or getting involved with the state to ensure that its institutions and laws advance women’s lives and con-tribute to gender mainstreaming. Working with the state or denying state support in the name of the feminist cause has sometimes helped to mark the boundaries between different types of feminists. To illus-trate this, liberal or social democratic feminists may tend to collabo-rate more with state institutions for provision of services for women and try to use existing paths of political participation and social ser-vices. Feminists in the more radical wing of the feminist spectrum, however, may ignore the possibility of changing the state from with-in, although they do not totally deny getting financial support from it. Nevertheless, the question that remains for each and every femi-nist organization or women’s movement in many countries is how to work with the state and influence its politics and still remain au-tonomous and independent?

Feminist organizations that aim to combat domestic violence pre-fer to be independent and autonomous because their analysis of do-mestic violence, at most times, is different from that of the state. Fe-minists believe that at the root of male violence lies the patriarchal structure and inequality between genders, hence domestic violence is a consequence of the exercise of man’s domination of woman and his desire to control her. Therefore, they believe domestic violence can be combated by increasing women’s self-esteem and confidence and this can become possible by building solidarity among women who question the patriarchal structure and values that lead to vio-lence against women. Feminist analyses of domestic violence that fo-cus on the power relations between men and women clash with the state, which instead tend to see domestic violence as a social problem that produces homeless women who need protection and shelter. Seen in this way, the problem of domestic violence is no more a social is-

Şule TOKTAŞ and Cagla DINER 51

sue whose solution lies in the transformation of the patriarchal struc-ture, but a social ill that produces homeless women and children with problems as they grow up in a violent environment.

These differences between the state and feminists in their anal-yses of domestic violence are reflected in their outlooks regarding how women’s shelters should be run. For example, feminists try to do away with the hierarchical differences that exist within the shelter structure, not only among the women (young/old, educated/unedu-cated, black/white etc.) who find refuge there, but also between the staff and the women staying at the shelters. As their goal is to build solidarity among the women who suffer due to the unequal power of men and women, feminists are against the presence of any male employees in the shelters as they feel that the same relationship of unequal power and dominance that exists in society would be repro-duced in the shelters as well. For feminists, it is very important that women who stay at the shelters make their own decisions about their lives; only then it would be possible for a woman who has been sub-jected to male violence over a prolonged period of time to gain self- confidence and feel that she is the one who is in charge of her own life. In state-run shelters, these issues are generally not a priority. Like any state institution, government personnel want to run shelters in a way that would imply the least number of administrative diffi-culties, which would generally mean that there would be more rules (such as curfews or strict time schedules and spaces for meals, clean-ing etc.) and more control over the women residents. In contrast, one that is run according to feminist principles would try to empower the woman staying there by showing her that she is being listened to, providing her the opportunity to articulate herself and her needs and giving her the space to make her own decisions. A state-run shelter may not pay attention to such issues because of the administrative difficulties and costs that such a structure would entail. State-run shelters may also be more lax regarding the confidential nature of the information regarding the women at the shelters and secrecy about their location. Shelters run by feminists who value the building of

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solidarity among women are sensitive to the feelings of insecurity of the women who have been subjected to violence and have escaped from it; they believe that they can be healed only if they feel secure and totally shielded from the violence that has surrounded them for a period of time. Employees of the state-run shelters, however, may be less conscientious in maintaining confidentiality regarding person-al information and secrecy about the location of the centers. It is not uncommon in Turkey for employees of the shelters run by the state or local governments to contact the husbands of the women who had sought refuge and try to convince them to go back to their families. Such practices go against the principles we have raised above, not only in violating confidentiality, but also in not giving space to the women to make their own decisions about their lives.

In this context, feminists have to consider whether they should work in cooperation with the state and its shelters when fighting do-mestic violence or establish their own independent ones and run these in accordance with feminist principles and give due respect to the ethos of women’s solidarity. The heart of the issue lies in the following dilemma: will feminists be more effective when they involve themselves in the politics they have in mind and maintain their crit-ical and independent worldview as they remain outside the purview of the state and its institutions or will they enjoy a broader sphere of influence if they actually work along with the state? In the latter case, they will have the opportunity to experience problems and is-sues related to establishing and running state-funded women’s shel-ters, share other women’s problems in the shelters, provide them with a new and a strong sense of life, and work to counteract the bureaucratization tendencies and so on. Therefore, is this not a way of undertaking effective politics as well?

Our aim in this paper is to describe the political issues and de-bates that the movement for combating violence against women in Turkey has raised regarding the dilemma described above. More spe-cifically, we will analyze the case of women’s shelters in Turkey to reflect on the opportunities and drawbacks of the alliance between


independent women’s organizations and the state. It should be noted that women’s organizations in Turkey have had different agendas de-pending on their political positioning. Violence against women, how-ever, is a common theme, as women in Turkey, despite their religious differences, sexual orientation or ethnicity, are frequently exposed to violence or threats of violence and this is widely denounced as a so-cial problem (Altinay & Arat, 2008; KSGM, 2008). The causal roots and the solutions to this problem vary across women’s organizations as well. The importance attributed to the struggle with violence against women also varies. Some organizations consider this to be the most visible manifestation of male dominance and terror against women, while some others refuse to discuss this without reference to the eth-nic terror that the Turkish state imposes on the Kurds in Turkey. It is in this context that the struggle with violence against women is illustrative of the variety of positions adopted by women’s organ-izations and is an arena where the question of the degree of coopera-tion with the state surfaces.

In Turkey, the involvement of state agencies in establishing and governing shelters has created a debate that has been unfolding since the 1990s. Apart from publications in journals or meetings, one of the major discussion forums is the ‘Women’s Shelter Congress,’ held annually since 1998. These Congresses are held under the lead-ership of a different women’s organization every year. All the organ-izations in the country that work to combat violence against women have been meeting at these annually to discuss problems related to women’s shelters and to formulate policy proposals. These meetings are attended not only by civil society organizations but also by offi-cials from the General Directorate on the Status of Women and the State Institute of Social Services and Protection of Children (SSPC), and shelter employees (governmental and non-governmental).

Our analysis relies both on secondary and primary sources of information such as in-depth interviews and participant observation in platforms where women who work with survivors of domestic vi-olence meet annually to share experiences, discuss the problems they

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encounter while working, and formulate policy proposals. The shel-ter congresses held in Van, an eastern province of Turkey, in 2008 and in Adana, a southern province, in 2009 were the main research sites for anthropological exploration, participant observation and ad- hoc interviewing. In addition, six non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Istanbul were contacted: the Şahmaran Women’s Solida-rity and Research Association (Şahmaran Kadın Dayanışma ve Araştır-ma Derneği), the Young Girls Shelter Association (Genç Kız Sığınma Evi Derneği), the Human Resources Development Foundation (İnsan Kaynağını Geliştirme Vakfı), Amnesty International Turkey Branch (Uluslararası Af Örgütü Türkiye Şubesi), the Purple Roof Women’s Shelter Foundation (Mor Çatı Kadın Sığınağı Vakfı), and the Şefkat-Der Human Rights Association (Şefkat-Der İnsan Hakları Derneği). These are the most prominent NGOs in Turkey involved in combating vio-lence against women. Eight in-depth interviews were conducted with feminist activists and representatives of these organizations from the shelter movement. This study not only uncovers the history of the movement against domestic violence in Turkey but also highlights the Turkish shelter experience, wherein it seeks to enable a compara-tive analysis of varying feminist responses to the question of ‘how to work with the state and still remain autonomous and indepen-dent.’ Thus, the results of the study are seen in a comparative frame-work, highlighting the story of women’s shelters in Turkey, where cultural codes of violence against women as well as the means and methods of combating these are both varied and similar to other country and regional experiences.

This paper discusses the shortcomings and challenges of work-ing with the state in the case of shelters in Turkey in three parts. In the first part, we lay out controversial arguments and experiences in feminism that are in favor of cooperation with the state and those that point to the drawbacks of such cooperation. We provide various examples from different geographic contexts that illustrate the diver-sity of situations that the women’s organizations encounter and ex-perience in the shelter movement. In the second part, we take the


case of the struggle with violence against women in Turkey and give a brief history of this, emphasizing the latest institutional and legal changes in the Turkish state’s approach to the issue. The third part reflects on the Turkish experience of how to work with the state and still remain independent. Here, we discuss the feminists’ reservations on working closely with the state in establishing and running wom-en’s shelters and how they view the state and relate to it. For this we mainly use the field research outcomes and findings from the in-depth interviews that we conducted with activists of the shelter movement in Turkey. The fourth and last part of the paper concludes by reflecting on the feminists’ dilemma in working and cooperating with the state.

The State, Non-Governmental Organizations and Feminist Ac-tivism: A Debate on the Limits of Involvement with the State In the last quarter of the 20th Century, we have seen a proliferation of women’s policy agencies worldwide, i.e., the UK Equal Opportu-nities Commission, the French Ministry of Women, the Spanish Insti-tute of Women, the Nigerian Ministry of Women Affairs, the Zam-bian Ministry of Gender and Women in Development, Ministry of Gender Equality in South Korea, Ministry of Women and Child De-velopment in India and the Turkish General Directorate on the Status of Women. Feminists now have the opportunity to influence the agenda and to further feminist goals by being represented inside the state apparatus and argue for their own interests in the policy-mak-ing process (Castaneda, 1994: 187; Ng and Ng, 2002). Thus, women’s policy agencies have become an important channel of gender main-streaming (Lovenduski, 2008: 174-175).

Despite the opportunities of collaborating with the state via policy agencies, there are criticisms against collaboration with gov-ernmental bodies. These indicate that the feminist movement might be facing co-optation by state agencies and powerful non-govern-

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mental or international organizations (Tierney, 2005). There are many NGOs that work on the formulation and implementation of social deve-lopment programs, the promotion of social justice and human rights, including women rights. Some of them are so influential that the World Bank consults with them on some of its initiatives. Some states have NGO members in their official delegations that prepare for UN con-ferences. These NGOs have quite hierarchical organizational struc-tures and have close relations with the bureaucratic elite and/or pow-erful business groups. Some transnational companies attend UN con-ferences by identifying themselves as NGOs, although they are in fact business or industry advocacy organizations disguised as NGOs. Some feminists are highly critical of this emerging process of ‘project feminism’ or ‘NGOization in women’s issues,’ which has led to ex-cessive involvement of the state and business corporations in wom-en’s organizations and policies regarding women’s issues (Silliman, 1999: 28). Those feminists who see feminism as a social movement that targets radical change in existing patriarchal social structures be-lieve that, as women work in projects funded by organizations in which men are in decision-making positions (such as the World Bank, UN, European Union or individual nation-states), they move away from the world that the feminists had originally envisioned, for they act pragmatically and they get entrapped by the values of male do-minancy and global capitalism, which they originally wanted to do away with.

From another point of view, however, it is possible for femi-nists to capture specific opportunities to influence the state and trans-form its structure if they gain access to its institutions. Hence, while autonomous feminist movements may choose the strategy of being in-dependent from the state, create organizations and provide services to women within civil society, they may also choose to influence the state to extend women’s rights, to provide services for them, and persuade the state and state actors to use feminist language and adopt feminist values (Beckwith, 2007: 322; Banaszak et al., 2003: 26; Jenson, 1987; 1995).


A similar debate is taking place in the struggle with violence against women. Some argue that domestic violence is an area that definitely requires state intervention and state support. An example of the positive outcomes of the state’s efforts to alleviate women’s problems is the legislative effort to punish men who engage in vio-lent behavior against their wives (Dziegielewski et al., 1996). Legal mechanisms that seek to prevent domestic violence include protective orders or temporary restraining orders. Such orders can be obtained from the local courts and prevent abusers from arriving at the resi-dences of the battered women. The police are supposed to arrest the abuser if he violates the court order. It is important, therefore, that the state makes such laws, because it conveys the message that fam-ily violence is a serious crime. In addition, the implementation and enforcement of such measures for the prevention of violence against women may require further state action. Some judges, trial court ad-ministrators, case managers and intake officers tend to discourage battered women from filing criminal or civil complaints against their husbands (Baker et al., 2003: 756). Inadequate police response in cas-es of domestic violence is another problem. For example, in a study conducted in Phoenix, Arizona, although police officers were sup-posed to arrest batterers, out of 49 calls that fit the definition of bat-tering, arrests were made in only 9 cases (corresponding to 18 per-cent). In 25 of the cases (51 percent), police used conciliation, which involved talking to the people and emphasizing the importance of the husband-wife relationship (Ferraro, 2005: 195). Because the police, judges, prosecutors, and court clerks are state employees, feminists view the state as the major institution that can change the criminal and civil justice systems in a gender-sensitive way. Thus, their collab-oration with state institutions may be very useful in the struggle with violence against women.

The needs of women who escape from their abusers have also led some feminists to strongly advocate state involvement, especially in the case of shelters. A study of women who separated from their partners because of violence shows that 77 percent of them stated

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that they needed tangible support such as childcare, child support, housing assistance, counseling, shelters, and monetary support (Baker et al., 2003: 768, 774). The need to provide formal support mecha-nisms for battered women and public funding to support those who need to leave their abusive relationships is the main reason that some feminists advocate working closely with the state.

A major problem for feminists in working with the state relates to the state-funded shelters’ definition of violence and perception of the roots of violence against women. Social service organizations, government agencies and sponsors perceive violence in a way that is quite different from that of the feminists. The latter explain vio-lence against women in terms of sexism, male dominance, patriarchy and female subjugation. Hence, domestic violence is analyzed in a structural context, referring to the dynamics of interests, asymmetri-cal power relations between genders and domination (Bograd, 1990: 14; Meyer, 2001: 23). The outlook of social-service organizations, gov-ernment agencies and sponsors is different. For them, violence against women is a consequence of individual pathologies, of victims and perpetrators. In their explanation of the social problem, there is no reference whatsoever to the power structures inherent in patriarchal societies. The feminist critique of the patriarchal society drops out of the picture; feminist politics evaporate and the issue of violence against women becomes an issue of social policy only. This is pre-cisely why Tierney (2005) argues that, with the attachment to gov-ernmental organizations of the state, the movement is likely to be-come more “moderate, reformist, and cast in the traditional social service mold” (254).

There is criticism also regarding the professionalism and bu-reaucratization that sneaks into the battered women’s movement and in women’s shelters (Janovicek, 2007; Schechter, 1990). As social-serv-ice oriented organizations, government agencies and sponsors have become more involved with the issue of violence against women, they tend to hire professional directors and staff to work in women’s shelters. This contradicts the feminists’ ideal of establishing egali-


tarian relationships between staff and battered women. Feminists aim to do away with the hierarchical relationships of patriarchal soci-eties that rest on power structures, but the spirit of professionalism does not allow that. On the one hand, shelters and battered women need the money and support of the social-service oriented organiza-tions, sponsors, government agencies and the skills of the professio-nals to survive in this competitive world. On the other hand, the very thing that they need tends to lead them to sacrifice their princi-ples and sense of politics.

In fact, non-involvement with the state may not ensure run-ning egalitarian, non-hierarchical women’s shelters that are uncon-taminated by unequal power structures, bureaucracy and a spirit of capitalism. Even if the shelters are administered by women’s organ-izations independently, feminists might be obliged to make conces-sions to look more “acceptable” to the major donors who support their shelters such as appointing a board of directors for its admini-stration. Although most people do not hesitate to make donations for a safe place for women and children, obtaining funds for the shelter becomes harder when there is a political agenda involved, with femi-nists challenging the patriarchal structure. In this context, it is likely that the commitment to non-hierarchy will be replaced by a bureau-cratic structure and resistance to patriarchy by an “apolitical” outlook (McCarry, 2001: 27, 29).

Another important consequence of a heavy bureaucratic struc-ture at the shelters is standardization and exclusion of many women. Women with substance abuse problems, homeless women, mentally ill women, women who are HIV-positive and disabled women are excluded from many shelters (Dorian, 2001: 24). Women’s shelters al-so marginalize certain groups such as lesbians and bisexual women. Some of these do not take into account that poor and non-white women not only suffer from male violence, but are also subject to a wider range of social threats such as marginalization, exclusion, cultural imperialism, heterosexism and racism. The category of the “normal battered woman” helps to exclude, individuals from margi-

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nalized groups. The concept of “normal” is based on the experiences and worldviews of those at the top of the social hierarchy, that is, the white, heterosexual, middle class (VanNatta, 2005: 417, 437). Even if the shelters are run on feminist principles, differences and conflict among the women might be ignored and the emphasis on the solid-arity of all women may be limited. The criticisms of third-wave femi-nism suggest that it is not right to assume race and class neutrality of gender violence because this may lead feminists to overlook the oppression of low-income and non-white women, which upper class and white women do not experience (Haaken and Yragui, 2003: 51, 66). Hence, feminists face a difficult task regardless of whether they work closely with the state or not, i.e., running women’s shelters based on feminist politics that aim to promote cooperation and egali-tarian relationships. This is a difficult task precisely because the so-cial structure we live in breeds hierarchy and bureaucracy that, in turn, encourage competition and domination rather than cooperation and egalitarian relationships.

Violence against Women in Turkey: A History of the Shelter Movement and the Struggle against Domestic Violence The debate on the question of how to work with the state and still remain independent has had reflections in the Turkish case as well. Violence against women is also a dominant theme in political acti-vism in Turkey. The shelter movement or the struggle with violence against women is one of the major targets of feminist campaigning, alongside other subjects such as the increase in literacy and educa-tional levels of women, the elimination of discrimination against them, sanctions against honor crimes, improvement of women’s human rights, adoption of the quota system in political participation and in-crease in women’s representatives in the Turkish Parliament. Not ev-ery women’s organization has concern for expanding the number of women’s shelters on their agenda, nor can we talk of Turkey’s shel-


ter movement intensively adhering itself to other areas such as devel-opment of women’s working rights or availability of child-care facili-ties for women (Diner and Toktas, 2010). It is in this context that a distinct history of the shelter movement appears within the feminist movement in Turkey.

The movement against violence against women started with a huge demonstration in 1987 in Istanbul. Women organized a protest in Ankara Youth Park in 1987 for the Mothers’ Day with the slogan “You love your mother; you batter your wife!” In the same year, the “No to Battering March” was held and a national campaign for the struggle against violence against women was launched. What trig-gered the demonstration was the decision of a judge who ruled against a woman’s plea for divorce on the grounds that women needed to be beaten in order to be controlled. It was at this point that women put forward violence as a social and political problem that needed to be dealt with in the public realm. Before this campaign, nobody talked about violence against women as a social and political issue; violence in the family was regarded as a private matter, one that was to be addressed within the domestic realm by the family members only. With this protest, women were saying that the consequence of such an outlook was to keep women’s battering invisible and so they were demonstrating because they no longer wanted to keep it so.

Following the 1987 demonstration, rather large and influential campaigns and demonstrations against violence against women were organized in metropolitan cities like Ankara, Izmir and Istanbul. These protests brought women’s critical concerns regarding the issue of physical and sexual violence prevalent in marriages on to the pub-lic agenda (based on the motto ‘the personal is political’). The estab-lishing of Purple Roof (Mor Çatı), one of the oldest and most estab-lished civil society organizations aiming to end violence against wo-men, emerged from the feminist women’s objectives to stand in soli-darity with each other. The immediate action of the solidarity net-works initiated by the Purple Roof was to have a 24-hour help-line service for battered women to call for support to find secure accom-

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modation, medical and/or legal advice. This experience pointed to-wards the need to establish women’s shelters for battered women and this has been one of the priorities of Purple Roof since it was established in 1990.

The first women’s shelter was founded by a local government in Istanbul, the municipality of Bakırköy in 1990. This was followed by the municipality of Şişli in Istanbul, and another shelter was es-tablished in 1993 by the local government of Altındağ, a municipality in Ankara. The SSPC also started to establish shelters under the name of “women’s guesthouses” in the beginning of the 1990s. As of Janu-ary 2010, there were 29 shelters established and run by the SSPC, three by provincial governments, 19 by municipalities, and three by civil organizations (Habertürk, January 2, 2010). In terms of regional distribution, there are more guesthouses in the western regions of Turkey than in the eastern or southern-eastern parts (Akçer, 2006: 50).

The international environment regarding women’s rights has also influenced Turkey and contributed to this increasing trend of es-tablishing women’s shelters. Turkey ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1986. In 1995, Turkey accepted without reservation all the articles of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action that came out of the Fourth World Conference on Women organized by the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Turkey has tak-en on the responsibility of working towards gender equality, empow-erment of women and elimination of all forms of gender-based dis-crimination. These commitments were repeated by the government in 2000 during its five-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which took place in New York. In 2002, Turkey ratified the Optional Protocol to CEDAW, hence rec-ognizing the competence of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women to review the country’s compliance with CEDAW.

The process of Turkey’s accession to the EU (European Union) has also been an important point in this regard. Since 1999, the annu-


al progress reports on Turkey prepared by the EU Commission re-peated the need for governmental action to provide shelters for wo-men subjected to domestic violence. Women’s non-governmental or-ganizations have become partners in EU funding schemes and re-ceived substantial grants, some of which have gone into the struggle with violence against women. The Daphne Programme also supports this struggle via projects run by women’s organizations. Thanks to the EU accession negotiations, the Municipality Law #5393 was passed by the Turkish Parliament in 2005. This law states that all metropoli-tan municipalities and local governments with more than 50,000 resi-dents must establish shelters in order to ensure the protection of women and children. According to 2004 figures, in Turkey there are 15 metropolitan municipalities and 182 municipalities with a popula-tion over 50,000, which indicates the need for 197 shelters for women (Alpago, 2006: 47). Although there is no legal requirement or legal sanctions on municipalities to open shelters, this is considered a step forward. The new Criminal Code enacted in 2005 also introduced im-portant regulations regarding the fight against domestic violence, in-cluding harsher penalties for different types of violence against wom-en such as honor crimes and wife battering. Law #4320 or “Family Protection Law,” on the other hand, aims to protect battered women by keeping the offenders away from their homes.

The Contribution of the Turkish Experience to the Debate on ‘How to Work with the State and Remain Independent?’ The shelter movement in Turkey, having recognized the importance of cooperation between women’s organizations and state institutions, advocates increased responsibility and roles for the state in prevent-ing domestic violence. Arguments that defend the involvement of the state point out that an independent shelter founded by a women’s civil organization would definitely face the risk of closure due to problems of sustainable funding. Therefore, one of the main points

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that the shelter movement makes is that allocation of resources for establishing new shelters for women victims of domestic violence is a state responsibility. As one of the interviewees who has been active in the shelter movement since the 1990s and who has worked for set-ting up one of the first women’s shelters in Turkey said:

We cannot do this by knocking doors and asking for funds. We have to make sure that [our shelters] are sustainable. What I am saying is that even if we were a civil society organization that is well-endowed, even if we had good sponsors and generous dona-tions, the state still has to pay for my main costs. I am providing a service that a social state should be providing (Representative of the Young Girls Shelter Association).

In fact, there seems to be consensus among those working at wom-en’s organizations about the responsibility of the government to pro-vide shelter services for battered women and they criticize it for fail-ing to do so. We hear activists making the following statements: “The state is not allocating resources for its woman citizens” (Representa-tive A from the Purple Roof).

The state has abandoned all the responsibilities of being a social state. It has shifted its responsibilities to non-governmental organi-zations. The state is exploiting us. . . . The understanding in Turkey is that women work for free. . . for example, taking care of the sick, the elderly, and children are perceived as the natural duties of women. That is how the state exploits us. . . . That is why I believe that the state has to financially support organizations such as our shelter [Purple Roof]. As a woman citizen of this country, I have the right to such support. I pay taxes, so I deserve to get some services in return. . . . However, the state cannot interfere in how we run our shelter just because it is paying for it (Representative B from the Purple Roof, emphasis by the authors). There is virtually no civil society organization working in the field of trafficked women. . . because running a shelter for these women is very risky, needs lots of money. There is hardly any funding; and


any problem might arise any time. This is why this is an empty field (Representative of the Human Resource Development Founda-tion).

Although the shelter movement emphasizes the responsibility of the state to provide services for women who are victims of domestic vio-lence, they do not refrain from criticizing the SSPC, the principal state institution responsible for provision of social services in general and for women’s shelters in particular. The most frequent criticism di-rected against the SSPC is definitely regarding the inadequate num-ber and capacity of SSPC shelters:

The state does not provide enough resources. . . . You know the Rotary Children’s House [a shelter run by the SSPC]. The police take the woman there first; they let her spend one night there, and the next morning she is on the streets again (Representative A from the Purple Roof).

We see the SSPC as an isolated, unreachable community. It is not possible to reach them; neither is it possible to follow up on an application you sent there (Representative A from Şahmaran).

I want to state this very clearly. I have also said this on TV and at press conferences a couple of times before: SSPC is the one insti-tution in Turkey that is doing its job in the worst possible way (Representative of Şefkat-Der).

The shelter movement also criticizes the way the SSPC runs its wom-en’s shelters, that is, without carefully taking into account the univer-sal and/or feminist principles that underpins their work. According to civil society organizations from within the shelter movement, the shelters should be run according to these principles, not according to the guidelines and regulations determined by some state agencies that are bureaucratic and hierarchically organized. For instance, in order to accept women into shelters, the SSPC requires them to sub-mit documentation regarding their age, marital status, and proof that

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they have been abused. Those from within the shelter movement ar-gue that most of the time women are in desperate situations and have to run away from their homes without being able to take their ID cards with them. Therefore, they may not be able to meet the con-ditions that the SSPC requires. As noted below:

For example, if you don’t have your ID card with you, it is un-likely that the state shelters will accept you. For us [Purple Roof], a woman who says she is in need of a shelter is exactly the type of woman who should be accepted to the shelter. . . . Sometimes women do not have ID cards. I have heard of only one case where a woman was accepted to a state shelter although she did not have an ID card. [SSPC shelters] cannot accept [women without ID cards] (Representative A from the Purple Roof).

The shelter movement also claims that the SSPC does not take ad-equate measures to keep the location of the shelters secret and does not provide sufficient security to protect women from their male at-tackers (most of whom are relatives or husbands of the women) ar-riving at the shelters to shoot, kill or beat the women who have sought protection (Kadın Sığınakları, 2000: 35, 160). One SSPC meas-ure that violates the secrecy principle is that shelters must submit a monthly report providing information on their women and child residents. These reports not only put the shelter’s inhabitants in dan-ger but also bring unnecessary bureaucratic burden on shelter wor-kers. Although the regulations prepared by the SSPC, as well as the order issued by the Prime Ministry in 2006 (Order No. 2006/17), ex-plicitly state that the places of the shelters should be kept secret, but this principle is frequently violated (Karataş et al., 2008: 37).

In some cases, the violation of such secrecy is a consequence of the state institutions’ lack of awareness of the special security needs of shelter residents. In her interview, Representative A from the Purple Roof explained how their organization brought the issue to the attention of the Ministry of Education, which allowed parents to track all information on their children online. Once Purple Roof


brought the issue to the Ministry, explaining that it created a security problem for the women and children staying at the shelters, the group convinced them to adopt an institutional mechanism that would keep the information on shelter residents confidential. However, this required first the realization that such a problem existed, then bring-ing it to the attention of the Ministry and finally convincing the latter to devise a rule to protect the residents.

A human rights activist from Şefkat-Der argued that in Turkey husbands and fathers do not have much difficulty in tracing their wives or daughters. They can go to the children’s school, to the bank to learn about recent account activity or to the hospital to see wheth-er the woman had made a recent visit; they ask around and easily find out where the woman was staying. Unless serious and carefully- designed mechanisms are devised to keep the addresses of women staying at the shelters confidential, their safety cannot be guaranteed; and failing to keep them safe is one of the issues that the shelter movement criticizes the state for, because it is not taking effective well-designed measures for the purpose.

The shelter movement has also criticized the state because the SSPC is authorized to monitor the setting up and governance of all shelters including those founded by NGO initiatives or municipalities. SSPC bureaucrats have the legal authority to organize ad-hoc inspec-tions, write reports, develop recommendations, and even shut down a women’s shelter. Some activists in the shelter movement are very critical of the Turkish state for making it very difficult for civil soci-ety organizations to work effectively because of heavy bureaucratiza-tion and strict requirements:

State officials always act as if they are in charge of everything, as if they are the supervisors of those of us working at civil society organizations. In fact, there is no such thing. . . . SSPC regulations for establishing women’s shelters were very strict before; they speci-fied the maximum number of women to be accommodated, and re-quired each shelter to employ three or four social workers, not vol-untary workers but full-time, paid employees. We did not even

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have enough social workers and psychologists back in 2001 (Repre-sentative of Şefkat-Der).

If your organization is a foundation, the state strictly monitors your finances and your income. We wanted to take advantage of the law about donations; the state asked us to report how much money we would collect in donations before we started collecting the money. How am I supposed to know how much I will be able to collect? That law is still in effect and it is very impractical (Representative B from the Purple Roof).

The 2005 change in the law on associations, which eased restrictions on NGOs, is recalled as a progressive step that has encouraged the shelter movement. The following excerpts reflect the affirmation of the legal amendments that allowed for more flexibility to civil society organizations:

You don’t have to get permission from the SSPC anymore; there is more room to act independently. However, SSPC has not yet got-ten used to the new situation. If a civil society organization makes a public statement that the government does not like, the govern-ment finds a way to use the law of associations or foundations against that organization; it would use these laws as a means to pressure us (Representative of Şefkat-Der).

Civil society in Turkey is young. It was only in the last 10 years that civil society got more active thanks to the European Union accession process. . . . Especially the public deliberation on the is-sues raised by feminist organizations and the women’s movement, is absolutely new (Representative of Amnesty International Turkey Branch).

Feminists also criticize those regulations of the SSPC, according to which shelter managers have unshared responsibility and authority over shelters. Therefore, feminists believe that such regulations will lead to hierarchical relationships between shelter workers and the women because these negatively affect the processes of healing, deve-


lopment and learning to live together in solidarity. The following statements from an interview with two women who work at Şahmar-an illustrate this: “I call some of these shelters medium-security pris-ons” (Representative A from Şahmaran).

[Shelters] take away your right to communication; they don’t let you keep your cell phone. If you have a child, you cannot even find a glass of milk for your child because the kitchen and all clos-ets are locked. Even when you have a small crisis, such as an ur-gent need for diapers or pajamas for your child, you have to find the shelter manager. And it is not really possible to reach her at night (Representative B from Şahmaran).

Further, the feminists argue that all shelter workers should be wom-en who want to cooperate with the battered women. Some of them may be victims who have themselves escaped battering and strug-gled to change their lives. Therefore, it is best if shelter workers are volunteers who do not regard their jobs only as a source of income and who work for principles of solidarity rather than money (Kadın Sığınakları, 2003: 167). With state employees, it is not easy to build such ideal relationships between shelter workers and the women who seek shelter.

While women’s organizations in Turkey in general blame the state for not providing the required support to the shelters, some feminists make a strong point of getting shelters to run according to feminist principles rather than as ordinary social welfare institutions. Feminists criticize the bureaucratization of the shelters, which turns these institutions into just another social service provider and far away from feminist principles. Women’s shelters should be places that reflect the spirit of feminist politics, i.e., an arena to illustrate that the personal is political. Hence, the experience of Turkish femi-nists has made them aware of the fact that when the state responds to the demands of the movement through various reforms, it also brings in its own agenda and its own politics.

Activists from the shelter movement have also made policy

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recommendations for things such as the training of personnel. As one shelter activist offers:

The state is responsible for establishing women’s shelters, but it has to ask for support from women experienced in running in-dependent women’s shelters. These experienced women should give training to employees of state shelters. Hence, we need to be trainers because it is not possible for us to establish and run in-dependent shelters that can meet the demands of the whole coun-try. We also have to work for ourselves in order to make a living, especially in an expensive city such as Istanbul (Representative B from the Purple Roof).

In a similar vein, it is argued that independent women’s organiza-tions should be involved in running shelters although the state should be paying for these services. It is claimed that women’s rights and status may improve only if women’s organizations pursue their own politics and remain independent of the state and its politics:

The shelter movement in Europe started with voluntary workers, and it became professionalized thereafter. Today, [shelters] provide services; the local governments buy these services. This is what we want from the state, that they buy our services. We provide this service better [than the state]. . . [the state should pay us] and we will do this job right. [Independent women shelters] are really do-ing this job well. [The quality of] our service cannot be compared to the service provided by the SSPC. This is because we are also doing politics of shelters. Unlike state employees, we are not work-ing for salaries. We are dedicated to the work we do; we are com-mitted to it. . . . Since [violence against women] is a social problem, we have to work with the state and with local governments; this is a necessity (Representative A from Şahmaran).

However, women’s organizations should be guaranteed their indepen-dency. By independency I mean that you should have the space to shape your own politics. This is what makes [women’s organ-izations’] presence important; our independent politics. If the state


is taking women’s organizations seriously today, that is because the independent politics that these organizations have developed has been right and effective. This righteousness and effectiveness can only be guaranteed if we are independent. Hence, the state should buy our services but it should not tell us what to do or how to do it (Representative B from Şahmaran).

We value our independence. We learned a lot by running an in-dependent shelter. It is only with this know-how that we can pro-ceed in the shelter movement. It is very hard to work with state institutions. Needless to say, we are not accustomed to working with the state (Representative A from the Purple Roof).

Another woman who has been active in the shelter movement makes the same point: “They do not have the right to intervene in how I run the shelter just because they are providing the funds; they can only monitor how I spend the money” (Representative of the Young Girls Shelter Association).

We see that the shelter movement criticizes the state for not providing enough funds and an adequate number of shelters. On the one hand, it regards the state as an important partner in the struggle against domestic violence and, on the other, the movement is trying hard to keep its autonomy and independence from the state. Femi-nists from within the movement loudly voice their criticisms of state shelters and openly declare that they want them to be run along fem-inist principles. They even want to monitor and control the state to make sure that its shelters are run accordingly, while they seek to keep the state’s patriarchal politics away from the shelters.

Conclusion Feminists and shelter activists in Turkey, just like their comrades in Europe, North America (Tierney, 2005) and Asia (Karlekar, 2004), face the possibility of co-optation and loss of independence as the state

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takes on the responsibility of providing services to battered women. On the one hand, the state provides funds, staff and training to support women’s shelters, on the other, it controls, disciplines and intervenes in the manner in which shelters are run. It imposes its own rules, guidelines and principles. As a result, the safe place that feminists had set up to provide protection and a healing environment for battered women ends up becoming just another institution of the modern wel-fare state with its bureaucratic and hierarchical structure.

Feminists and shelter activists in Turkey are facing a familiar dilemma: they need the state to fund and provide support for wom-en’s shelters. However, they do not want the state to interfere with and regulate them; instead, they want these to be run according to feminist principles, independent of state politics and regulations. The shelter movement in Turkey openly declares that it wants state sup-port but it does not want the state to have an excessive role in how they are run. Feminist women’s organizations argue that even if shel-ters are run by the state, they should be run according to feminist principles and that the employees at the state-run shelters should un-dergo training to develop sensitivity to the psychology of the women who have been subjected to violence. They say that both local and central governments should establish and run shelters but feminists and civil society organizations should monitor how these are operated, so as to ensure that they are run in accordance with feminist princi-ples. Just like their comrades in other countries, feminists in Turkey are facing a double-edged sword: they need the state to pass laws, implement policies and provide funds in order to protect women and children from violence and punish their abusers, but they need to struggle hard to make sure that the very same supportive state does not divert them away from feminist principles and politics.

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Feminists' Dilemma: With or Without the State?

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