Exit from the Istanbul Convention: Erdogan’s fear of the rainbow

Erdogan pulls it off: Despite national and international protests, Turkey is withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention. The president is concerned with maintaining power. He accepts that this will turn people into fair game.

Ankara is afraid of the rainbow and modern women. If it weren’t so tragic for those affected, it would be almost amusing. People with rainbow T-shirts and purple skirts, the color of the women’s movement, seem to be one of the greatest dangers in Turkey – for example, if you look at the massive police operation last weekend to see the ban on Pride, the march of the Enforce the LGBTI + scene in Istanbul.

Police officers in heavy riot suits stand a little lost in a bar district of Istanbul and look at the party people. They intervene elsewhere, taking participants of the Pride and a press photographer into custody with rather rough methods.

What does this have to do with the Istanbul Convention, which is supposed to protect women from violence? The Turkish president himself had already announced through his spokesman in March, when he announced the withdrawal, that the agreement was being used by a group of people to normalize homosexuality. So it stirs up hostility towards gays, lesbians or even transsexuals – a group that was a target in many parts of Turkey anyway, but practically became fair game.

And why all of this? Because everything that is foreign is frightening and conservative Turks are afraid of so much colorful, revealing life? Because the ideal world only works with the mother at the stove, preferably with a headscarf, with the classic family image?

Erdogan is about maintaining power

Erdogan is about more – to maintain power. He wants to continue serving his nationalist and conservative electorate. A year ago he turned the famous Hagia Sophia in Istanbul into a mosque again. But the effect has now fizzled out. Spectacular military offensives in northern Syria are currently not in fashion. So now supposedly rebellious women and the LGBTI + scene have to serve as the enemy.

For this he also risks their lives. Because quite a few traditional conservative Turkish men still seem to regard women as their property. This is shown not only by hundreds of feminicides a year, often by boyfriends, husbands or ex-husbands, father or brother, but also by numerous attacks. The signal to these men: You have the right to do so, you do not have to fear punishment. That there is also a national law against violence against women pales.

The pressure on women is increasing again, if only through Erdogan’s slogan to father at least three children per family. Their body no longer belongs to them, becomes a shell for the production of children.

Is that supposed to be Turkey in 2021? Some of Erdogan’s own AKP party even looks at the ground in shame. One member of the government even feels compelled to make it clear behind closed doors that not everyone is behind the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. It is a shame that none of them dares to come with us today to show that they are not afraid of the rainbow and the many modern women in Turkey.