Sally Jackson from FiLiA meets: Mine Atli –from KAYAD

My name is Mine Atli. I'm a feminist activist and I am a lawyer by profession and I work for a women's organization called KAYAD, the Association Of Women to Support Living, which is a women's organisation located in the northern part of Cyprus in Nicosia. One of the last remaining divided capitals of the world.

We provide frontline services to survivors of domestic violence. We lobby and advocate for better policies surrounding services for survivors of domestic violence, for legislation improvements and developments and we also provide trainings to professionals that have contact with survivors of domestic violence.

Sally: So that's, that's quite a busy schedule you have. Are we talking about a large organisation? How big is KAYAD?

Mine: Actually, our permanent staff members only comprise of three women, but we have a Board of Directors who are very active in their role and engaged. And we have a large member base who are very much willing to do voluntary work for us.

 And when we do get projects, we work very closely with the European Union and our projects are EU funded which means that we have to provide a percentage, obviously through our own fundraising. But the large majority of the funds are from the European Commission. And when we have projects, we have project based staff.

So at the moment with our project, we have four people in house and it will be increased to five in a few months. 

Sally: So, thinking about women in Cyprus, what would you say are the main issues that they're facing at the moment? 

Mine: Well, in 2013, with a project called Women Who Face Barriers, women who overcome barriers as they face them. We did research to identify what the role of women in the community are. And we looked at gender roles and gender stereotypes. And we looked at the opportunities and the resources that they were able to access. And I think some of the main indicators that would briefly give you an insight as to the, the profile of the Turkish Cypriot women is for example, we asked a thousand respondents thousand women: If the man and the woman were both working, who ought to be home first? 

And 83% of female respondents responded with the answer of the woman. 

Another important indicator, I think is we asked the women: Would you approve if your son fell in love with a divorced woman?

And 90% of them said no. 

So we can see through that research study that the gender roles are very much entrenched in the belief systems of the society.

When we look at other indicators, for example, representation, we can see that Turkish Cypriot women are very much underrepresented. Only four out of 50 MPs previously were women. 

And then there was a change in the political parties at a station that required a 30% quota in the parties for their candidates. And that maintained that the representation was increased to nine out of 50. So it didn't reflect the 30% quota. It didn't reflect it, but it was a dramatic increase from four to nine, which is, I understand that it's sad to boast about nine out of 50, but it's an improvement, but it shows that we have a long way to go.

In addition, when we look at other rights, for example, maternity leave, it's very minimal. We have 54 days before the birth and 54 days after the birth. So that's approximately four months. And if it's a premature birth and it's unexpected at seven months, for example, they lose the two months prior and they only have two months after for example.

 When we look at the earnings of women, we can see that in general, women earn less than men, like everywhere in the world. When we look at the property, we see that men own most of the property. And then finally, an a very important indicator for us was the study that we conducted in 2015 within the scope of the Businesses Against Violence project, which was where we first met Standing Together.

And in that study, we saw that one in three women were exposed to physical domestic violence since the age of 15. 

And something even more dramatic that came out in the results was that in the first question we asked the women, have you ever been subjected to any of these physical violences, for example, hair pulling, pushing, punching, and one in three, say yes.

I mean, the second question we ask, if you haven't been exposed to this violence yourselves, have your neighbours or your friends been exposed to this violence, have you heard them, have they recounted this directly to you and 99.5% say yes.

 So we can see that there is a disparity there and that women aren't actually comfortable to even talk about the violence that's been perpetrated against them at the moment.

Sally: But also obviously showing that it's part and parcel of society in some ways disturbingly the normalises the incidence of violence in women's lives. 

Mine: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we are progressing in that regard slowly but surely. What I can say is because it's a divided island, our island was divided in 1974. Because of the status quo, in Cyprus, the northern part of Cyprus is considered legally to be under the occupation of Turkey. 

So there is a state that's called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus that's recognised by Turkey only. No other country recognises the RNC. And so this has a lot of political implications in terms of the economy, in terms of other human rights aspects.

 As it is everywhere in the world, but somewhat more becomes a more difficult issue is that women's issues are constantly considered as peripheral issues. So the main issue is the Cyprus problem. The main issue is the division. The main issue is the effects that it has on the economy, the effects that it has on the environment. So we're constantly talking about these issues as primary important issues, and then anything related to women and women's rights and women's rights policies are constantly regarded as peripheral.

Violence against women was not considered as an issue in our country for a very long time in the northern part of Cyprus for a very long time.

And that's why we didn't have a women's shelter. So five years ago we had no women's shelter. We had no legal aid. There was no police unit within the police force that dealt only with survivors of domestic violence and through our intensive lobbying and advocacy and raising awareness on the fact that it's a real issue that affects so many people, now these exist. 

So the Turkish municipality Nicosia Turkish municipality opened a shelter. The social services have allocated a budget for legal aid and the Prime Minister has allocated a responsibility to the Research and Development unit of the police to establish the Violence Against Women Unit which happened on the 25th of November 2018. So it's very new. 

Sally: It is actually quite astonishing that within five years, so much has changed. And I know a lot of that is because KAYAD and the lobbying that you've been involved in, not just internally, but also as you say, working with Europe to get funding into Cyprus to enable some of that work to happen.

Mine: Yeah.  Some of it, I mean, obviously a lot of it is to do with the European funding because we wouldn't be able to do the work that we did if we didn't have the European funding. But in addition to that, we became members through the projects of Women Against Violence in Europe, the Wave network. And we also get in touch with the other organisations that do similar work to us, like Standing Together and we're able to then exchange. 

So when I came here today, alongside the things that I learned in regard to the content of the trainings, I also felt the energy of my sisters doing the work here in the UK and that energy alone in itself is actually a boost and a motivation for me to keep doing the work that I do. And it makes me feel like I'm a part of a global network. The solidarity that I feel that especially in this area, because it's such a lonely area and there's so much resistance all around us, wherever we go, the police, the social services, the health workers. There is a huge amount of scepticism around civil society and they see us as the meddlers, as people that don't really belong. They don't understand why we're doing it. It's not our role because we're not police officers. We're not health workers, we're not teachers. So who are we? And why are we doing this work?

And there's this constant resistance and we are very much isolated and we have to fight against it a lot of the time. And we have to start from scratch, ABC, explain what our situation is, what our cause is, why we do what we do, what our ambitions are, what our motivations are when as soon as I walked into Standing Together and I saw all these beautiful, strong women, I just felt like it was an area for me to breathe.

And I really felt that strength. And then Women Against Violence in Europe Network, they have a slogan Women Together Are Power, and I really felt that power.  

Sally:  Perhaps we should explain, although I've got my FiLiA hat on at the moment as a volunteer interviewing you, we are here today in my day job with Standing Together and we've been working with, as you mentioned earlier, we now have this new police unit in Cyprus and a couple of the police officers have come over here for some training. So you spent 3 days with the police officers. 

Mine: 2 days with the safeguarding team at Brent and Wembley police. 

Sally: Today, one of the lovely moments was, one of those frustrating moments when we as feminists recognise that something's not being understood, and we just looked at each other and we really needed to do no more than that because we both understood exactly what was going on and could support each other in that moment. 

Mine: We didn't know each other beforehand. And we only liaised we corresponded through two or three emails and we were able to sit across the table and look into each other's eyes and literally have a conversation without saying a word.

In fact, we were able to say other things and I was able to simultaneously interpret whilst we were having a separate compensation just through the way that we were looking at each other. And I think that's amazing. I'm so thankful and so grateful for all of these organisations like FiLiA and KAYAD and Standing Together that make it possible for us to have these platforms where we can communicate with each other. And we can gain from each other's strengths and weaknesses and learn from each other's weaknesses and, and develop our work so that we provide services and support to the community and the women.

Sally: Do you find in Cyprus; you were talking about the research that you did I just wondered if you're noticing any difference in the younger generation. Is there more of an appetite around women's rights with the younger generation. sometimes what we find in the UK is there's almost an assumption of kind of, well, we've got rights haven't we?

Mine: Cypress is very much like that. It's pretty much like that. And there is a backlash as well. We can feel it. I think with all the concerns and trends in the world, we can feel the kind of regression when it comes to women's rights. And, you know, we spend so much time advocating for something and then it's just considered by even the younger female generation is taken for granted. Really. 

For example, recently I was invited to a panel conference with a Greek Cypriot a Turkish Cypriot and a UN officer and my Greek Cypriot sister was talking about the importance of quotas and then the UN officer who wasn't coming from a feminist background said that, you know, we don't talk about quotas anymore. We talk about special temporary measures. I just felt that that was such a, it was just not fair to use a different terminology because my sisters for decades have been really struggling to explain what quotas are and quotas have gained so much for us.

And we have been able to gain so many more platforms through this understanding and through the struggle. And then now to abandoned that, to use a different terminology. I mean, why would I do that? I kind of felt like it would disrupt me from my obligations to the people that have been giving to the struggle for such a long time.

So, yes, I really believe that women's rights issues constantly need to be drawn to the core of the political agenda, because there will be a constant effort by the masculine patriarchy to push it to the side and it needs to be an ongoing effort. otherwise the minute we take a break, we skip back 10 years.

I remember when I first started to work for my organisation as a volunteer, uh, 15 years ago, I told my boss that I kind of thought that women's organisations were a waste of time and that if we wanted to make change, we had to have a political revolution and that I didn't understand what all this women's organisation malarkey was about.

There were times when I would get very frustrated and she said, look, to be able to measure the impact that you have had, you need to wait 10 years and then look back at what you have achieved in 10 years, and then see the difference. And I would say that this is essential for anybody that conducts study and efforts in this regard.

Yes. It takes us 10 years to take one step, but the minute we take a take a breath, it could throw us five years back. So we need to constantly drive forward, drive against the resistance. 

Sally: And you mentioned earlier about language and how things have changed. And again, I think that's something that's, that's really important that we remember and use the language of women's liberation rather than everybody being equal, because that's two things are very different. 

Mine: Absolutely. And it's so easy to say that we all want equality It's the easiest thing to say in the world, but when it comes to sharing the power, nobody's interested. So we need to talk about that. We need to flag it up. We need to address it. And I'm very much for including men in the struggle, but we need to all be clear as women that we need to lead the struggle to share the power because the power is not in our hands it’s in theirs. And we need to struggle to, to share it because they're not going to willingly give away something that they have. 

Sally: Absolutely, we were talking earlier and I was amazed actually in the time period that Kayad has been involved with, the differences that you have made, not just in providing practical support for women that might be experiencing violence, but also at the decision-maker level as well and how you've influenced change there. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Mine: Well, it's all thanks to the President of our organisation because she has a very diplomatic approach like you do, which I was able to see today which I think I'm working on it, but I'm not there. And I think it will take me a long time to get there. I don't think it's something that comes easily. You really need to work on that level of diplomacy because I couldn't do it. And she constantly makes an effort to demand things that may seem quite absurd to people initially. Like, why are you asking for that? They're not going to give it. 

But she's always very diplomatic about it and very persistent. And this organisation was established in 1998, so 22 years ago. And she has been demanding for things since, and she also does a very good job of congratulating policy makers that do, so, when things happen in our community, like the police unit. For example, we congratulate the Prime Minister and the community did not think that KAYAD was behind that, it's the Prime Minister. 

And when the Mayor set up the women's shelter, nobody thanked KAYAD, they thanked the Mayor and the President of our organisation also thanked the Mayor.

So I would be there, like, what are you doing? Like he didn't do it, they did it because we been pushing for it? You know, why don't you thank us, like KAYAD but that's not how it works. She gives great appreciation to the people that  implement the policies. And I think that's something to learn from, and that's how it works.

And also we are feminists, I am a feminist but we don't identify as feminists all the time. And we also make sure that when we have large scale events, we also invite the men of the community, the leaders, the male members of the community that have a voice because we understand the value in integrating them into the thing that we're trying to do.

So recently we had a walk, a demonstration, on the 25th of November. And, the Prime Minister walked with us. The President walked with us. The Mayor walked with us. There were many males, in my opinion patriarchal journalists that worked with us. And there is a value to that. I mean, it's very valuable for women to march as women. but it's also valuable for men and women to be able to get together when we're trying to drive for policy change and the policy change that we're trying to drive, there was a domestic violence legislation because our country, I mean, in the northern part of Cyprus, we don't have a domestic violence legislation. It's drafted. It’s not passed yet. And hopefully the next time we're here in London, I will be able to say to you we’ve got it done.

Sally: I have a feeling with your persistence, that it will be. 

We talked also very briefly about FiLiA. I hope at some point we can welcome you and some of your sisters from KAYAD to the conference and perhaps come and talk about some of the work that you're doing.

 Mine: Excellent. We would love that. And hopefully with Brexit we can, because if Brexit happens, we will not be able to come to the UK anymore for trainings because the training we are funded by the European Union and the European Union only fund us for activities that take place within the European Union.

And I think it's a great shame because I think the United Kingdom has a lot to offer, in terms of training for all of Europe. It's going to be sad that we won't be able to consider it financially. 

Sally: Thanks so much for your time today.

It's been so, so great working with you today. And as you say, I hope we get a chance to do it again.  

Mine: Thank you.