WHERE WOMEN STAND
This Monday, March 8, is International Women’s Day. GÜLDEREN ÖZTANSU looks at how women have fared in the world of TRNC politics.
WOMEN have been part of politics since 1960 when the rights to vote and be elected were gained following Cyprus’s independence from the UK, but progress since then has been stagnant.
No woman has ever been elected as President and all of the record-breaking 11 candidates in last October’s presidential elections were men. The first two women to enter the
TRNC Parliament were elected in 1990. In 2017 there were only four female MPs, which was a record at the time. This number rose to nine in January 2018 when the National Unity Party (UBP), the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) and the People’s Party (HP) returned three female MPs each. This rise came after the introduction of a quota that stipulated 30 per cent of parties’ general election candidates must be women. Sibel Siber, Prime Minister from June to September 2013 during a CTPled coalition government, and Fatma Ekenoğlu, who has won the most terms among women MPs, are the only women to have become Speaker of the TRNC Parliament. At a local level, however, the situation is stark: the TRNC has only had one female mayor in its 38-year history, despite other women standing as candidates. That person was the late Sevim Akbaş of the UBP, who became the mayor of Akıncılar in 1986. Onur Borman is another important name for Turkish Cypriot women as she paved the way for women in managerial positions in government as the first female head of a department, first female undersecretary, first female general secretary and first female minister. Borman, who was elected as a deputy from the Democrat Party (DP) in 1993, became Finance Minister in 1995. Although the current intake of MPs represents the most femaleheavy Parliament in the history of Turkish Cypriot politics, women still only hold 18 per cent of the 50 seats. That is well below the 30 per cent nomination quota introduced by a 2015 amendment to the Political Parties Act, implying that a quota for female MP candidates might not be enough to close the gender gap. The EU average rate of female MPs is 34.1 per cent, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) database. A breakdown by member states shows that in 2017 women made up 21.3 per cent of MPs in South Cyprus, a figure that rose slightly to 22.2 per cent in 2020. The EIGE is “aimed at providing statistical evidence which can be used to support and complement the European Commission’s Strategy on Gender Equality and support the Member States to monitor their progress”. Statistical analysis and reports on the political representation of women in North Cyprus, however, are highly limited. This gap in systematic, institutionalised research was addressed with the Gender Equality Department (GEP) law, but which has been stuck in a bureaucratic delay since 2014, when it was approved. Signs of progress are even more subtle in the Cabinet. Initially an allmale cabinet was selected by the UBP,
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