The podcast series “Revisionist History” by Malcolm Gladwell [1] inspired me to investigate gender issues in the context of politics. Gladwell ends his first podcast by listing a few countries that had only one female prime ministers: Brazil, Germany, Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Panama, Ecuador, Pakistan, and he goes on like this. While I am thinking the list is a bit surprising, I wonder if he is going to say my home country. "Turkey", he says somewhere in the middle, and this instantaneously takes me to my blurry memories of the first and only female prime minister of Turkey, Tansu Ciller.
In a nutshell, she is a very well-educated person, an academic, and economist, but a horrendous political leader who faced accusations of corruption and state-mafia connections. Yet I could not recall any misogyny she faced probably due to lack of my feminist goggles at that time. Considering the patriarchal culture of Turkey and how much progress were made in Turkey in terms of women equality, this is hard to believe. On the other hand, it is quite possible that I don’t have vivid memories of such because Ms. Ciller was not a feminist, neither in her time or now. She defined herself as “the mother and sister of Turkish society”. Overall, it is still shocking to have a female prime minister in a patriarchal society [3], and it is definitely worth looking into gender-inequality issues during Ms. Ciller’s rule. So, I start to surf the internet looking for information and articles about her.
My goal throughout this brief study is to form an objective opinion on whether the first ever female prime minister of Turkey faced misogyny. This is a hard task, in particular if one does not share opinions of the other person. It is easy to say “Ohh, she deserves such a comment because she really was not doing a good job at managing this and that crisis”. However, one should read between lines to identify any form of criticisms, e.g., an misogynist insult, pointed at her because of her gender. In order to facilitate my thought process, I kept asking myself the following question: “Would she get the same criticism if she was a male politician?” Here are some media pieces covering her that took my attention:
Altayli, F., Hurriyet, url: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/teke-tek-39280824
I have found some phrases belittling the person by using the gender-roles in society. Turkish-speaking friends would agree faster than non-speaking friends due to a loss of meaning in the translation. The author uses phrases like “Tamam mi Tansucugum?” “Hanım, hanım…”, “Evet Tansucugum”. I decided to skip the translation for this piece, but rather, I summarize the things that bother me in the article: First, the author does not address the person in a formal way, e.g., non-existence of “Ms” or “Prime Minister” before her name. It is a common practice in Turkey to address the prime minister or political leaders in a formal way. Second, ‘Hanim, hanim…’ means ‘Woman, woman…’ and it is attached with negative connotation towards women in Turkey. Finally, the writer says “This woman is either ignorant or mentally retarded”.
Benmayor, G., Hurriyet, url: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/tansu-cillerden-sonra-kadinlarin-sansi-hic-yok-mu-158534
In this article, the author presents some conversation pieces she had with the president of the Turkish-American Businessman Association, Zeynel Abidin Erdem, at the time. The writer Benyamor asks Mr. Erdem “Why don’t you give another chance to women?” referring to the recent election at the business association. The person replies “What happened when we elected Tansu Ciller?” Mr. Erdem discredits all women because one and only one female politician did a bad job at the political leadership of the country. First of all, politics are dominated by men; second, we have had numerous unsuccessful male politicians in this country and around the world, but have we ever come to the conclusion that men are incapable of political leadership?
Colasan, E., Hurriyet, url: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/tansu-nereye-kosuyor-39281297
The lack of formal addressing is almost everywhere in this piece. I also notice that he refers to the prime minister as woman a lot in the article. He does not refer to her as a politician, or a prime minister. In other words, he prefers to use the gender-identifying expressions and link her failure with womanhood.
No links for the next incidents:
Delegates chanted “Mesut back to power and Tansu back to the kitchen” [4].
She was heavily criticized by giving her surname to her husband.
I think there is no need to further comment on the above two incidents as my guideline deliberately identifies these incidents as gender issues. I haven’t heard anyone saying to a man “You belong to the kitchen!”.
In conclusion, I think that Tansu Ciller faced sexist criticism in her time. I had the preconceived opinion that the number of such incidents was high, but it did not turn out to be that way. The possible explanations are: i) She was not a feminist, she announced herself as the mother of Turkish people, so she did not draw much attention towards her female identity, (ii) The amount of resources going back to her reign is limited due to the lack of high tech, and (iii) Turkey is not biased towards women-in-power as much as I originally thought. Let’s finish it on a more hopeful note. At one point in time, the majority of Turkish voters did not have prejudice against women in politics, although things might went downhill after the election. So, I am hopeful that we will defeat the prejudice against women-in-power, once and for all, and in the near future we will see higher numbers representing women in the parliament, not just in Turkish parliament but all over the world.
Women belong everywhere!
[1] Podcast link: https://open.spotify.com/show/2LOJaYKijiwNefCvzczyib
[2] Some other countries who had female leaders are: Taiwan, Pakistan, Nepal, Croatia, Bangladesh, Mozambique.
[3] The percentage of women in the Turkish parliament is 15% in 2015-2nd term.
[4] Mesut Yilmaz is a former prime minister of Turkey.
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