Canan Arin

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Canan Arin (born 1942 in Ankara ) is a Turkish women's rights activist and lawyer . She is one of the founders of the first independent women's refuge project Mor Çatı (Purple Roof) in Istanbul .

Life

Canan Arin grew up in a civil servant family in Istanbul and was brought up in the spirit of Kemalism . It also means that she and her two brothers and a sister were relatively equal in the family. She studied law and political science in Turkey , attended the London School of Economics and Political Science for her doctorate in 1970 and then took up a position as a lawyer in Istanbul.

After the military coup in 1980 , Arin was one of the initiators of a Turkish women's rights movement. In 1990 she founded Mor Çatı, the first women's shelter foundation in Turkey. Later she and other women founded the organization Kader , which supports candidates from different parties on their political path. She was also one of the founders of the Center for the Advancement of Women of the Istanbul Bar Association. Arin remained unmarried out of opposition to Turkish family law, which allows perpetrators of so-called “honor killing” within the marriage to be pardoned. Arin's professional and political focus is on the prevention, exposure and prosecution of acts of violence against women.

Arin repeatedly accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of establishing patriarchal structures and customs and playing down violence against women . Erdoğan's conservative attitudes, for example, increasingly discriminate against women who do not wear a headscarf. She told Deutschlandfunk : "As long as Erdogan says things in public like 'Women and men are not the same, that contradicts nature'. As long as the AKP government encourages couples to get married as early as possible. And as long as the woman continues to be portrayed exclusively as a holy mother figure, the violence in this country will not stop. It will not stop as long as the government lacks the political will to really change something in this area. ”In the Turkish women's movement, Arin sees the potential to overcome ideological, religious or cultural boundaries by working together with Kurds, Alevi and Kemalists.

In 2012, Arin was initially threatened with arrest, which was also averted due to international women's protests. Arin had taken a public position against the marriage of underage girls, citing Mohammed's former wife and the wife of then President Abdullah Gül as examples . As a result, she was threatened with a prison sentence of several years for allegedly “degrading religious values ​​and insulting the head of state”.

In an interview she conducted with the NZZ in May 2016, Arin again criticized the situation of women's rights in Turkey .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Canan Arin: the advocate of women. EMMA dated March 1, 2007, accessed March 4, 2017
  2. ↑ Women in Turkey. Fight against everyday violence , Deutschlandfunk on March 8, 2015, accessed on March 4, 2017
  3. ↑ Women in Turkey. I am very worried about my country, Neue Zürcher Zeitung from May 6, 2016, accessed on March 4, 2017
  4. ↑ Ümit Yoker: I am very worried about my country. NZZ, May 6, 2016, accessed on March 25, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Arin, Canan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish feminist and lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Ankara