The Experience of Internally Displaced Women in Urban Areas of Western Turkey

According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (Guiding Principles), internally displaced persons (IDPs) refers to any person or group of persons who involuntarily had to leave their home or habitual settlements, without crossing an internationally recognized state border, especially in order to protect themselves from the consequences of armed conflict (UN Commission on Human Rights, 1998). There are an estimated 25 million IDPs worldwide and approximately 1 million in Turkey alone (Deng, 2003). In the 1980s and 1990s, an armed struggle between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish Armed Forces resulted in significant levels of internal displacement in Turkey. Throughout this period, state security forces forcibly evacuated approximately 3500 rural communities in the Kurdish regions of Turkey. Between 3 and 4 million villagers were displaced from their homes in officially sanctioned village evacuations, which were routinely accompanied by violent state security operations against Kurdish villages that were considered unsupportive of the government agenda. A state of emergency existed in many of the Kurdish provinces between 1987 and 2002, significantly contributing to the breakdown of the rule of law throughout this period. Displacement and its consequences continue to have a detrimental impact on displaced women in Turkey, who are predominantly Kurdish. Although many of the problems suffered by IDPs in Turkey are common to both men and women, there are specific manifestations of displacement that disproportionately affect women. However, the experiences of women are often neglected in discussions related to internal displacement, despite the fact that approximately 80 percent of displaced persons throughout the world are women and children (Schmiechen, 2003). In view of that trend, we will examine the experience of female IDPs in the western cities of Turkey, considering some of the social, economic, and psychological impacts of their displacement. This article will also discuss mechanisms in domestic and international law that are relevant to the violations suffered by displaced women in Turkey. Within this framework, we will consider the experience of internally displaced women in western Turkey in terms of their domestic citizenship rights and their international human rights