PROFILE
C
Copyright Toshi Kazama
Homegrown
ânân Arin casually shrugs when describing the occupational hazards of being a leading women’s rights advocate in Turkey. A few years ago, Arin recalls, a doctor in Istanbul survived a beating from her husband that left her spine broken in three places. When Arin helped the doctor initiate divorce proceedings, the abuser came after her as well. “He threatened me, he tried to bribe me, he tried everything against me because there was no way to break me,” says Arin, a lawyer who has pioneered the movement to provide shelter and legal services for domestic violence victims in Turkey. An unfaltering, powerful woman of 63, Arin knew she was the last line of defense for the woman; her family had turned her away and her abuser had evaded jail by paying a $2 fine. Another client’s violent husband once tried to discredit Arin by accusing her of kidnapping his child for ransom. When police stopped her and found no baby in her car, they took her in for questioning, during which she shrewdly refused to sign any papers without receiving her own copy. Eventually the case was dropped after the court claimed to have lost the file. While Arin downplays the menace of angry husbands, the staff in her warm, serene Istanbul office subject would-be visitors to rigorous questioning and cross-referencing in order to identify potential assailants. For Arin, the elaborate security protocol is just one of the many obstacles on the long, arduous and often circuitous path toward advancing women’s human rights in Turkey. It has often been said that Turkey sits at the crossroads of East and West, a geographical position that has created overlapping cultural dichotomies. Nowhere is that clearer than in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, which the swift currents of the Bosporous Strait have cleaved into European and Asian halves. Discos with flashing lights pump music around the corner from market stalls selling traditional kilim rugs, and
Progress Turkish Human Rights Defender Cânân Arin Takes a Bricks and Mortar Approach to Building a Movement for Women’s Rights
By Carin Zissis
