We have the politicians and media on our side and they ll be publicizing our candidates, says Z lal Kili , with a dash and verve as appropriate to Madison Avenue as to the election campaign heating up in Turkey. Z lal Kili is Secretary General of KA DER, the Association for Support and Training of Woman Candidates, established in Istanbul in March 1997 in order to help women politicians gain a foothold in the smoky, male world of Turkish politics. Fitting me in between three would-be candidates and a television crew, she told me how KA DER had established The Marathon, a comprehensive plan leading up to the next parliamentary elections. This had been prepared in June 1998 when elections were expected two years later, and has thus been modified following the setting of the poll date as April 18 of this year. Often she has to play by the existing rules, and is unable to focus on women s issues.
Statistics show that the threshold for change is when women account for one-third of parliament.
In Sweden and Denmark, the changing climate caused by female politicians ended application of the Salic Law, meaning that the first-born child of the monarch, male or female, now automatically becomes heir to the throne. Ms. Kili and her equally sparky Board Member, Suay Aksoy, say that the exact number of female candidates will not be known until the end of February, but their mood is optimistic. In January, we ran an ad in the newspapers, asking women candidates who agreed with our principles and wished for our support to fax a form back to the office. We have been overwhelmed by the number of responses, Ms. Aksoy, who has a successful career as a magazine editor, told me as Ms. Kili dealt with the NTV crew. Turks are proud to tell foreign visitors that Turkish women received the vote in 1934, before many Western countries, such as France.