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Women lead drive for gender equality in Diyarbakir, south-east Turkey, where PKK and Turkish troops have previously clashed
Most of the stories that emerge from Baglar, the largest and poorest district in Diyarbakir, in south-east Turkey, have been reports of violent clashes between Kurdish people and police.
Baglar is home to refugees who were forced from their homes when Turkish security forces emptied more than 3,000 villages during their conflict with the Kurdish separatist PKK in the 1990s.
But now it is making headlines for another type of revolution: the local authorities want to put women behind the wheel of buses and taxis as early as next month. Currently only 12.6% of all private drivers in Diyarbakir are female.
Funded by a European Union grant aimed at increasing youth employment, the municipality provided education in computer skills, accounting, communication, public relations work, typing and gender equality for 120 women between the ages of 18 and 29.
Ninety out of the 120 received an ordinary type B driving licence, while 30 went on to receive the type E licence necessary for driving public buses.
According to the mayor of Baglar, Yüksel Baran, the low education level of women is one of the district's most serious problems – 50.4% of all women over 18 are illiterate, and only 0.8% of the local female residents go to university. "Schools here are incredibly crowded; sometimes we have 40 to 50 students in one class. There are no libraries, no labs and no computers in Baglar schools. Compared with other Diyarbakir districts, we are at a distinct disadvantage," she said.
The municipal EU projects co-ordinator, Funda Ipek, said that one of the main aims of the programme was to get unemployed women out of the house.
"There are many young women with great potential, but most of these women stay at home. They don't participate in public life. All that potential is wasted."
According to the government's statistics, only 4% of female Baglar residents have a regular paid job. It is not the first women's employment project the Baglar municipality has launched; in 2010, 13 women were employed as cleaners, a job that had until then been carried out exclusively by men.
The municipality also supports a women's co-operative where women learn to make and sell their own products: traditional clothes, potted preserves or dried vegetables.
Cigdem Kaplan, one of the women who obtained a bus driver's licence through the programme, said the project had helped her question gender stereotypes.
"They always say: 'You have your fingers in dough. Why do you poke your nose in a man's job?' If that's true, why are all bakers, all carpet cleaners, all cooks here men? Shouldn't a woman be able to become a bus driver then, too?"
Another woman who participated in the project, Demet Tanrikulu, said she felt much stronger since completing the courses: "I learned to stand up for myself, not to give in, to voice my own opinions. I acquired self-confidence, understood that I could do things."
Kaplan agreed: "A woman that quietly endures is idealised in society – she is considered the perfect wife. But as a group we started to question and criticise things until then considered normal: violence, or the fact that women often only live to please their husbands, parents or brothers in order to avoid conflict."
Ipek thinks that the programme is was a small first step in the right direction. "Once people get used to female bus and taxi drivers, the general attitude will change. And more women will want to leave the house and work. They will say: 'I can do this, too.'"
Mehmet Bilen, a Diyarbakir cab driver, said he liked the idea of female colleagues. "Why not? A good idea!" He laughed. "The only problem will be that nobody will want to drive with us [men] any more."