Yeşim Başaran

It’s been a year since Esmeray has started performing a stand-up show called ‘Sack of the Witch.’ Besides performing every Friday night in a bar, she introduced her play in Bilgi University, Boğaziçi University and METU. ‘Sack of the Witch’ is presented on internet through those sentences: ‘The Sack of the Witch is on its way. It is a solo stand-up written and performed by transsexual feminist Esmeray. The performance is based on her own life story. Esmeray became aware of her gender identity during her early youth when living in Kars and immigrated to Istanbul before becoming 18 in order to live a relatively manageable life. After working in certain jobs, Esmeray became a sex worker first as a gay, then as a transsexual. After she became acquainted with women’s movement and feminism, she gave up sex labor. Esmeray is still working mornings at Amargi on a professional level and selling stuffed mussels in Istiklâl Street between 7-12 pm.

Melissa Bilal

Standing next to you, I was talking about being sent away from homeland. I was talking about the feeling of loss which is scraped to our bodies… How could I know… How could I imagine that the biggest pain will come with your loss… How could I imagine that I will be homeless after you actually… how, that we all will be…

I haven’t written since you, haven’t spoken… I required everyone to stop talking, everyone to stop talking for a while… Stop talking! Can you manage to shut up?

Nilgün Yurdalan

Two licensed prostitutes stood as a candidate for 2007’s general elections in Istanbul. They couldn’t get elected of course, only got around about 300 votes. What Ayse and Saliha were saying is; ‘‘we became candidates in order to confront losers, women whose lives were stolen, to the winners who were stealing our lives away. For the right to live of those who has oppressed, treated contemptuously or incurred by sexual assault. We became candidates for the purpose of building up women shelters. For freedom and justice. For not being buried as a subject of a file in police records because of our prostitution licenses and trying to get rid of the records. We became candidates for our insurance rights and getting recovery payments. The freedom, which has granted by someone as a favor, means captivity’’

I was thinking about questions when I decided to make an interview with Saliha for Amargi.

Nükhet Sirman

It has always been said that a citizen has no race, sex or religion. Both in Turkey and in the liberal democracies of the West, it is said that citizenship is determined through a discourse of universal human rights. Indeed, constitutions have made such a clause one of their most basic principles. The saying “Happy is the one who says I’m a Turk” can, in a sense, be interpreted as a statement which has the purpose of constructing a citizen fit for the universal norms, which are to be valid for all Turkish citizens. However, everyday practice demonstrates quite clearly that citizens in Turkey are not at all perceived as an abstract group of people with equal rights. This inequality appears, first of all, as an issue of identity. Those who should have no difference in their identities as citizens are, when appropriate, defined through expressions such as ‘alleged citizen’ or ‘businessman with Jewish origin’. And Europe, when continually reminding Turkey that Europe is actually a group of values, is, in reality, defining the ‘European citizen’.

Yıldız Ecevit

Poverty in general and specifically women’s poverty is an issue that has to hold an important place in our agenda. In parallel with the increasing unfair distribution of income and welfare society’s coming to the edge of collapsing, poverty deepening and becoming widespread across the world stands before us as one of the concrete examples of globalization. There is no doubt poverty is a global problem. However, while developed countries escape this problem with light scrapes, the Third World Countries heavily experience it. Because aforesaid countries are negatively affected by global economic developments.

Gülnur Acar Savran

The quota campaign organized by the Association for Supporting and Training Women Candidates (Kadın Adayları Destekleme ve Eğitme Derneği, KA-DER) has provoked various debates both among feminists themselves and among feminists, anti-feminists and the misogynists. Within these debates, one of the criticisms leveled against feminists’ –outspoken by Nuray Mert- told that women did not constitute a “political category.” Indeed Mert did not really clarify who can actually be taken as a political category or if under any circumstances she defended the quota demand for groups “testified” as a political category. But according to what she writes, it seems that she does not recognize groups that have various differences -to the better hierarchies- among themselves as “political categories.” In this paper, I will try to discuss the quota issue in relation to the concepts of “social group” and “collective political subject”. Because these concepts have a direct relation with the reasons why quota is defended and this is in return directly related to what we understand from feminist politics. By the way, in order to be understood correctly I find it useful to state this right in the beginning: Despite its various shortcomings and defects I find KA-DER’s campaign important. In this paper, by doing this, I will try to discuss some of the peculiarities and problems of feminist politics.