From Istanbul Convention to BRICS: A matter of axis

For years, a dark campaign has been waged, which has been subtle and spread across the country through government-funded organizations. Despite the abundance of confusing rhetoric, women's movements knew that the Istanbul Convention was the focal point of this dark campaign around the main theme of anti-women. In early 2016, before the July 15 coup attempt, anti-women sentiment surfaced.

Anti-women and anti-equality in the parliament have become one of the main topics of the country's agenda with the well-known and infamous '(Don’t) Divorce' Commission. We knew that they had been mobilizing since 2011. It must have been thought that the work that had been carried out secretly for about five years had reached a point of consistency. It is for this reason that the Istanbul Convention comes to the forefront of my writings on this period when women's rights came up for discussion. 

Even before the unilateral, single-signature, and unlawful decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, long before the discussions intensified and it was put on the agenda of the AKP's Central Executive Committee, we were saying that such a decision would be a decision about the future of Turkey.

The tendency of the government to move away from universal values in terms of human rights, especially women's rights, has brought the country to the brink of the abyss in every field. However, some of the names chosen to popularize this tendency have risen rapidly. All anti-convention and anti-women campaigns were funded with public resources.

One of the common names seen in every campaign was Mücahit Birinci. In the early 2010s, he was first heard of as the president of a family protection association in Bursa. As the anti-contract campaigns increased, so did his position. Within a few years, we saw him as a lecturer. Then he appeared with the title of lawyer, and after his unilateral decision to unilaterally exit from the illegal contract, we saw him rewarded with membership in the AKP's Central Executive Committee. I am sharing this information, which is not directly related to our topic, for the record. Of course, it is an important detail when we consider the role of this name in the internal debates of the AKP today. And of course, it also makes it easier to establish a connection between the AKP's interest in BRICS, which has been in parallel with Iran since the 2010s and which has occasionally been the subject of news reports, and its decision to exit the Istanbul Convention.

At a time when the world is in the throes of a multi-polarization, Turkish foreign policy is trying to establish a position of so-called strategic autonomy. For a long time, it seemed to have chosen to distance itself from the Council of Europe in order to show that it would not be fully engaged in the Western axis as before. Its failure to implement ECHR judgments was a clear indication of its approach.

However, with the decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention in 2021, it officially announced to the world its departure from the universal values of human rights. Unfortunately, women's struggle for equality and the agenda of the women's movements have not been able to fully escape being treated as a kind of tabloid news in Turkish politics, so the importance of the issue could not be grasped in time. I have written many times that the policy on the Istanbul Convention points to a shift of axis in Turkey's foreign policy. When I look back at these articles in different media today, I always come across a '404' warning. It seems that some has realized its importance, but...

While Russia, Iran, and the Vatican were lobbying in the corridors of the UN and blocking the diplomatic discussions at the meetings with their anti-women views, Turkey was simultaneously leaning towards BRICS. As racism, militarism, and sexism gained political importance with the rise of right-wing populism in the world and in our country, even the dark campaigns against the Istanbul Convention, despite all the efforts of women's movements, failed to realize that the issue was not limited to the Istanbul Convention, which was drafted to combat violence. It was only treated as an 'ordinary women's issue'. 

You may remember that in the past, a list of the first to be rescued in case of a fire was used to hang on the walls of public institutions. But we know that in the bureaucratic minds of states, there are unwritten rules that contain the opposite. This is the list of the first to be sacrificed in a crisis, and it has a much higher power of influence than written rules. Women are the first to be sacrificed. In an economic crisis, women are the first to be sacrificed when reducing employment, restricting education rights through ideological approaches, and cutting back on health policies. It is precisely for this reason, and precisely because these widespread practices are taken for granted, the ways in which opposition to the Istanbul Convention might be reflected in the diplomatic sphere were not emphasized. Even the Council of Europe did not see it as a move that would narrow its sphere of influence, or even if it did, it did not care. In the end, it seemed to say 'It is a women's issue, let's not make too much of it and damage our relations in more serious areas'.

Russia, on the other hand, is determined to fix Turkey's axis in its favor. Despite the shy silence of Turkey's diplomacy, the Kremlin loudly announced Turkey’s BRICS membership application to the world, and that Erdoğan will attend the October 22-24 meeting. We understand that the membership application will be accepted and we will change the system without our knowledge. Not only that, given that we are given such prestige due to our NATO membership, we will be labeled as an 'unreliable partner' in both the Western and Eastern systems. As a matter of fact, in recent years, we can see that Turkey has been put on the list of countries to be isolated from the world by imposing visa difficulties for Turkish citizens, even for green passports.

The BRICS organization, which envisages economic and cultural cooperation among member countries, is composed of the initials of the founding countries. If Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa decide to expand, I don't know whether countries like Turkey, which would be joined later, will be referred to with a “+”, but there is no doubt that we will be the spare tire of that structure. I guess we will not be the only spare tire. Because BRICS, which has been on the world agenda since 2001 with the claim of being 'an alternative to the unilateral economic model of the West', frequently announces that many countries, some of which are probably speculations, want to join it. So what are the other countries whose names have been announced over the years, or what is the common feature of the list of countries Turkey wants to stand with? Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Cuba, Indonesia, Greece, Honduras, Kuwait, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, and Vietnam, according to Sputnik Turkey.

We can say that the 'Eastern-type' of neo-colonialism marketed itself as an alternative to the 'Western-type' of neo-colonialism and named it BRICS. For those who rule their own country like a colonial governor, it may not make much difference which colonist will be under their command. However, in cases where there is no complete exit from the Western system (like us), BRICS membership cannot be explained by strategic autonomy. In such a situation, strategic autonomy means moving back and forth like a ping-pong ball between the two sides in every global crisis. Such a strategy choice is not considered a balance policy. On the contrary, it means “It is not enough for the Western system to exploit me on its own; I also want to be a colony of the East.” 

While the Western system is based on universal values ​​aimed at improving human rights, the Eastern system, on the contrary, seems to dictate moving away from universal human rights values, especially ignoring women's rights. The Western system is criticized as having double standards in terms of human rights in our country, but switching to the Eastern system that completely disables these rights can only be the choice of those who want to become a dictator rather than a colonial governor.