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antenna is an interdisciplinary laboratory that adopts innovative methods, fosters transformative encounters and supports networks of transnational solidarity in response to the growing authoritarianism.info@antenna-lab.org
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lab for resilience
lab for resilience serves as a hub for rights-based initiatives and reclaim civic space in Turkey and beyond, building on the lived experience of rights defenders. At the intersection of human rights, gender equality, and cross-border solidarity, this lab brings together activists, scholars, journalists, and civil society actors to foster dialogue, and collaboration in increasingly repressive environments.
Defending others, liberating themselves: WHRD’s experiences in Turkey
The environment, in which human rights defenders (HRDs) in Turkey operate, seriously deteriorated, the space for civil society in Turkey has dramatically narrowed, and many crucial safeguards protecting defenders have been removed over the last decade. HRDs face various forms of reprisal, discrimination, and attacks, including threats, intimidation, stigmatization, judicial harassment, and prolonged arbitrary detention. The rise of authoritarianism and the increasing threat targeting the civic actors in Turkey, has triggered these actors to look for new methods to continue their struggle. This has led many rights advocates in Turkey to identify themselves as ‘human rights defenders’ both to struggle for their own rights to advocate and to make use of the range of options available for their protection based on the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
However, this newly emerged field for the protection of HRDs in Turkey lacks a gender perspective, which also illustrates the general lack of gender-based analysis and feminist approaches in the human rights milieu in Turkey. Although the majority of HRDs operating on the frontline are women, their work, the unique challenges they face, the gender-specific threats and attacks they experience, and the gender-specific consequences of these attacks are not recognized, documented or addressed by human rights initiatives.
Within this project, four main problems were targeted:
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The lack of gender analysis in the field of human rights in Turkey, in particular in the newly emerged area of the protection of human rights defenders.
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The lack of recognition of the work and gendered experiences of women human rights defenders in Turkey.
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The insufficient understanding among WHRDs in Turkey regarding the UN mechanism for the protection of HRDs, as well as the lack of knowledge and experience sharing between WHRDs from other geographies.
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The lack of connection between WHRDs from Turkey and those from other geographies, which could have enabled the sharing of experiences and lessons learned, strengthening their networks of solidarity.
November 2021
team:
Özlem Kaya
Özgür Sevgi Göral
Duru Yavan
team:
Özlem Kaya
Özgür Sevgi Göral
Duru Yavan
in partnership with:
Hafıza Merkezi
Hafıza Merkezi
with support of:
ISHR
ISHR
a feminist discussion on the “human rights defender” paradigm in turkey
november 2021 author: Duru Yavan
This report introduces a gender caveat to the “human rights defender” discourses and mechanisms that are increasingly influential in Turkey, thus hoping to contribute to the gendering of the field and, on this occasion, to make women’s gendered experiences visible.
women and LGBTQI+ actors as lifelines of each other: relations, alliances, disjunctures in the field of human rights
november 2021 author: Hande Gülen
The report, draws on the experiences of the actors in the field to question the disjunctions between the feminist and LGBTQI+ movement and the human rights movement and to reflect on the reasons for this distance.
defending rights between institutions, identities and subjectivities: a gender perspective on civil society
november 2021 author: Gülistan Zeren
This report aims to reveal the gendered structure of civil society and the struggle for rights, and to determine how women are affected by these gendered patterns in the field of human rights in their everyday lives.