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  • Sosyalist Feminist Kolektif

The Sosyalist Feminist Kolektif (Socialist Feminist Collective; SFK) was founded by a group of women in Istanbul in 2008. Today the SFK has about three hundred members. It is organized in five cities in Turkey—Istanbul, Ankara, Eskişehir, Izmir, and Adana—plus it has individual members in other cities at home and abroad. Members are organized in permanent and issue-based commissions that function on the principle of rotation. The collective organizes events that are open to the public; publishes a quarterly journal, Feminist Politika; and is highly involved in street activism, such as organizing demonstrations and flash mobs.

SFK’s mission is to strengthen the grassroots feminist movement in Turkey. The collective has a materialist feminist approach with the analytic concept of “women’s labor” at the center of its political perspective. Previously, the SFK ran campaigns focused on female labor, especially on women’s unpaid labor in the family, such as We Want Our Due from Men! demanding equal sharing of housework and care work between men, women, and the state. In our campaign There’s Life outside the Family! we drew attention to women’s entrapment in oppressive familial relations.

Currently, the SFK is involved in a number of joint campaigns with other feminist organizations. Immediate Action against Femicide urges the government to take preventive measures against the killing of women, for example, by opening shelters instead of increasing the punishment for the murderer. The campaign Abortion Is a Right, Decision Belongs to Women demands free and unconditional access to abortion and that abortion be defined as part of women’s right to health. Women’s Initiative for Peace is a platform from which the SFK, with its feminist agenda, contributes to women’s involvement in the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict.

The SFK tackles a wide range of issues, from women’s paid-unpaid labor to intimate citizenship. In Turkey women’s rights are under attack by the government [End Page 132] of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party; AKP). The AKP, like its counterparts elsewhere in the world, implements a conservative neoliberal project, which is the biggest challenge facing feminist activism and women’s liberation. In the Turkish context the catchphrase of this project is Strengthening the Family. In practice, this means that women are the main providers of housework and care work. The consequence of women’s increased unpaid domestic labor is that women have less access to paid employment, which pushes them into low-paid, flexible, and insecure jobs. This makes women dependent on their families, that is, on men. In this way the AKP ensures the further exploitation of women’s labor in paid employment and the reproduction of the labor force while securing the patriarchal organization of gender relations. Political Islamism is employed by the AKP as the “legitimate framework” of the exploitation of women’s bodies and their labor. The SFK’s political project in turn is to mobilize women against conservative neoliberalism that subjects their lives to male control in the public, economic, and private spheres.

Sosyalist Feminist Kolektif

feministpolitika@gmail.com

August 21, 2014 [End Page 133]

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