KAMER Foundation

The KAMER Foundation, also known as the Woman’s Center, is an organization where all women can find a space. KAMER was established in 1997 in Diyarbakir, Turkey, as a limited company with two partners and was reestablished in February 2005 as a foundation.

Our mission today is to fight discrimination, violence, and structural hierarchy. We work for a participative community based on sharing and solidarity between independent individuals. To reach this aim, KAMER focuses on identifying the practices of a sexist system that harms women and children, developing alternatives to those practices, and enabling their implementation. KAMER believes that participative democracy is possible when gender equality is sustained.

The main office of KAMER is in Diyarbakir. There are twenty-three provinces in the eastern and southeastern regions of Anatolia, where the Kurdish population is the majority. KAMER is organized in all twenty-three provinces. Besides these regional organizations, the foundation sponsors sharing experiences rather than branches or offices in twenty-one other provinces throughout Turkey. Fifty women work full-time in the twenty-three branch and representative offices. In addition, two hundred volunteers support KAMER on an as-needed basis. Depending on the activities we run each month, the number of women participants varies from five hundred to three thousand.

One of our current projects is Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. This is a monitoring project focused on the implementation of recent legislation in Turkey, such as Law 6284 (Prevention of Domestic Violence) and Prime Ministerial Circular 2006/17 (Measures to Be Taken for Preventing Violent Acts Targeting Children and Women and Custom and Honor Killings). We also monitor compliance with international conventions, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Istanbul Convention, and the Children’s Rights Convention. A second activity is Children Would Save the World. The project examines the traditional methods used to transform babies, whether girls or boys, into sexist women and men. We work to develop egalitarian early childhood education.

Due to the political atmosphere in Turkey, KAMER has experienced various difficulties in the seventeen years since its establishment. In its early years KAMER was exposed to pressure from political groups that condone violence and official authorities who refused to accept KAMER’s independence. On the one hand, armed groups claimed that KAMER was established by the government to split their combat, so they wanted us to close the KAMER office and stop working. On the other hand, state institutions believed that we were connected with the armed groups. They did not want to believe that some women had organized an independent women’s center in a region where the armed conflict was ongoing. We faced considerable danger and had no personal safety. However, the prejudices did not last long because there was wide involvement by women.

Another challenge has been from people in the community, such as armed groups, some leftist groups, and traditionalists, who argued that we should first work to establish a democratic regime and then address the liberation of women. They pressured us through isolation and by smearing our reputation. During the same period, women were murdered in the name of honor, and their bodies were disrespectfully buried in anonymous pauper’s graves. This also has been overcome, since KAMER fights against murders in the name of honor and this treatment of women’s bodies. We are guided by the motto “the path to democracy is through gender equality.” More generally, we find that despite legislation, circulars to combat violence against women, and signed international conventions, the main challenge in recent years is a political discourse that highlights and emphasizes the sacredness of the family instead of women. Violence, harassment, and murder are not considered important issues. Women with no children or who are living alone are disparaged.

KAMER Foundation

Diyarbakir

August 20, 2014