The name of woman

While answering a taunt in the TBMM General Assembly, AK Parti Group Deputy Chair Özlem Zengin found herself having to say "Until the AK Parti, women had no name." I say "found herself having to say" because, judging by the taunts from the HDP members to which she had to respond, women were left with no rights, no freedom and no personality in this period.

The role of women's rights advocate that the HDP members have written for themselves on account of femicides is a perfect example of hypocrisy in the face of the reality of the children and women abducted to the mountains by the PKK and subjected there to every kind of abuse. At one point all the activities of the HDP's youth and women's branches had turned into organizations for the PKK's abduction of young girls and boys to the mountains. Mothers whose children have been abducted to the mountains are in fact crying out this reality in all its nakedness and tragedy right now in front of the HDP provincial building in Diyarbakır. The HDP should not have the face to open its mouth on the subject of women's names, but the shamelessness has now reached the point of burning, and they are still talking.

These words that Özlem Zengin uttered, as if driven out of her wits by this rotten shamelessness of the HDP members, in fact touched the CHP members where it hurt.

First in the Assembly and then on social media, we did not have to wait long to witness an uproar from those keen to beat women, who suddenly made the heading "what the republic gave women" into a stick for themselves. For those who define it by reference to the Republic in Turkey, a woman is always in a place where she "must know her place" and, if she does not, "will be put in her place." There are limits set for her, and to the extent that she stays within those limits she is endlessly free. As long as she does not push the limits of her cage, she can live in that cage as she likes, and in any case her very existence in the cage is limited to playing the roles those Kemalists have written for her. She is a ballroom ornament, an accessory that complements her husband at social events..

There is no doubt that, regarding the legal statuses granted to women, Turkey is even ahead of many Western countries. But in a country where there are no parties, where no different idea has the right to life, and therefore where there is no proper election, what could the right of a man, let alone a woman, to vote and be elected be like?

In fact, the 27 years in which the CHP alone was in power, and afterwards the official ideology that was set like concrete during those 27 years, showed well enough what it was like. What the name of a man or a woman was in that period, those who knew, knew.

In a society that was being redesigned from top to bottom in this period, did men or women have any chance of being individuals in their own right, so that they could have names? Everyone was now the state's woman, the state's man and the state's child. The parent would have no role in the child's education. They had no choice at all about whether their child would take a religion class or an evolution class or any class. The child was an organ of the state and would be entirely under the state's discipline. Whatever the state gave. Could a woman who, from top to bottom, was shaped within this organized structure according to the needs of this organization have any name other than playing the role written for her?

Moreover, within this role, contrary to what is supposed, a woman was in practice never even regarded as a citizen equal to a man. She was not free enough even to decide what she could and could not wear, for example. Even going only by the matter of clothing, it is sufficiently clear how secondary, how dependent, how deprived, and therefore how nameless the woman was in the republican period.

It was decided by the ruling CHP ideology that a woman who had reached university level could not decide what she could and could not wear. This record alone is a shame enough to last a lifetime for the CHP members never to mention women's names. And not only this. While every kind of discrimination, humiliation and exclusion was deemed fit for women who of their own free will chose to wear the headscarf, in the meantime the same discriminations were practiced, using official authority, on men whose wives wore headscarves. People were dismissed from the TSK because their wives wore headscarves. Those whose wives wore headscarves were deliberately not appointed to certain critical posts.

What I am talking about here is of course not the victimization of men whose wives wear headscarves. What should really be seen in this practice is that the woman was regarded as an object absolutely subordinate to her man, with no decision of her own, who could cover or uncover her head by the man's decision. Yet a woman could cover of her own will, and could even be doing so despite her husband. Indeed, in the majority of examples, women of course establish their relationship between themselves and God independently of men, and received the command of covering directly from Him.

Of course this possibility could not occur to the CHP mentality, because, though perhaps they themselves may not be aware of it, in their minds woman had no name, no view, decision or will of her own. If her husband wanted her to uncover her head, she had to uncover it. She could have no capacity or power of decision of her own.

The CHP members' conception of the free woman is sick from whichever side you look at it. What it ultimately serves is another matter, but it is evident that it has nothing to do with the woman's personality, her rights, her name.

Yet after the AK Parti's struggle of many years, women today have gained personality, power, freedom and rights not "in word" but "in essence," and have attained their own "name." In this state woman is now at a point where she could regard even the debate over whether or not to choose her clothing as a disgrace. Whether she covers or does not cover is up to her.

This is not a subject to be left to certain thuggish politicians.