Campaign launched to encourage more women Mukhtars

Ece Çelik- ISTANBUL

Seven women who co-founded the Global Equality and Inclusion Network Association (KAPI) have embarked on a mission to bolster the representation of female mukhtars (heads) in villages and facilitate training for the “Open a Door” campaign.

Ayşe Kaşıkırık, in 2021, founded the KAPI organization in collaboration with six female associates.

KAPI, an organization that operates in various provinces, launched the "Open a Door" campaign, which aims to empower women to become mukhtars. This campaign involves conducting training in multiple villages as the association travels from one village to another.

Kaşıkırık sheds light on the pressing matter of gender disparity within Turkish local politics, emphasizing the need for improved female representation. With a statistic revealing that out of the 50,000 mukhtars in Türkiye, a mere 1,134 are women, the issue of gender imbalance is brought to the forefront.

According to Kaşıkırık, gender inequality is a pervasive issue on a global scale.

"However, it is possible to combat this problem by initiating efforts at the grassroots level. The local level plays a crucial role in fostering positive change at the national level, which in turn contributes to addressing gender inequality on a global scale," said Kaşıkırık.

"Everything is difficult for women, but local politics is particularly difficult," Kaşıkırık stated, adding, "Local politics in Türkiye is a profit-driven system based primarily on zoning, tenders, and earnings. Türkiye requires a clean political system. Research from around the world indicates that women are considerably less likely than men to engage in corruption and bribery."

The KAPI organization also facilitates a platform for women mukhtars and mukhtar candidates to engage in a collective exchange of their respective experiences. In its endeavor to foster the advancement of female candidates, the initiative additionally seeks to bolster their visibility on various social media platforms and websites.