Bêritan Elyakut/JINHA

AMED – The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which began accepting applications for candidacy with the party on February 16, announced that candidates must be advocates of women's freedom to apply. Men who "are violent towards women, use sexist language and discourse and have committed crimes against women in the past" will not be eligible for candidacy. Women are required to be "grounded in a commitment to women's freedom."

Theparty aims to run 275 womenMP candidates in Turkey'sgeneral election, scheduled for June 7, in order to achieve 50/50 representation.February 10 marked the final day for bureaucrats to resign from government jobs in order to be eligible for candidacy in Turkey. The HDP candidacy applicant committee is now seeing applications.

"We brought equal representation to life in the 2011 elections," says HDP Diyarbakır Province Co-Chair Gülşen Özer. The HDP has an equal representation policy for all municipalities, which are governed by one female and one male co-mayor. "The co-mayor system really stemmed from the need to make women's missions more central."

The new criteria stem from the same mission. Evaluation criteria for women will prioritize love of one's home country, ethics in political culture and having no ties to the dominant system.

Men must not be polygamous, adopt a perspective that values women's viewpoints and have no tendency to violence. When it comes to violence against women, "We won't run candidates who had a history of violence against their partners 10 years ago but say that it's in the past. We only accept candidates with a history of partner violence if we see them as having completely changed their viewpoint," says Gülşen.

The committee will respond to candidates' applications within 5 days of the receipt of their application and a fee of 1000 lira for women and young people; 2000 for men;and no fee for disabled applicants.

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