Gülşen Koçuk/JINHA

İZMİR/AMED – The biggest problem for women attempting to create independent economic resources for themselves in Turkey is not a lack of labor, say women's cooperative directors. It's a lack of a market.

Since the 1990s, women engaged in domestic work have been forming institutions in Turkey to organize women who work in the home and fight against women's exploitation as a cheap and flexible labor force.

Women founded the Kibele Women's Cooperative in 2004 to support and organize women forced to migrate to the city of Diyarbakır during the Turkish army's 1990s military campaign against Kurdish civilian villages. The cooperative holds ateliers where women produce handicrafts to sell. The city government originally supported distribution networks for the cooperative, but this ended.

"Outside of sales to friends, fairs and festivals, we couldn't make any sales," said Fatma Altunç, Kibele's president. The cooperative has held a number of ateliers for handicrafts including silver working, cooking, lithography, mosaic-making and weaving silk puşi scarves, but not all of these have been able to continue. "Because our ateliers worked through projects, when the projects finished, they lost their continuity. Our priority is to at least continue this work with local sources after the projects finish."

Lately, the women of Kibele have had to stop puşi production due to their inability to find a market. The production is time-sensitive; the raw silk from which puşis are woven easily spoils. In Diyarbakır, the Assyrian community was a top cultivator of silk and silkworms until 1950, and local products were predominantly made of silk.

"Now, that production network is totally gone," Fatma explained. "What we want is for sericulture to be taken up as a social project, with the private sector stepping in. This is something that needs to happens with NGOs and women."

Until the 1980s, Turkey was among the top three silk product producers in the world, but, Fatma says, "the state is callous." She said that organized support for women's cooperatives could solve their problems.

Ayşegül Tıl, one of the directors of Izmir's ÇEKEV (Çiğli Association for Women's Solidarity and Valuation of Women's Labor), concurs that it's hard for women to find a market for handicrafts. The association has been trying to organize the sales of products women are making in the home as part of its effort to support home-based women workers.

One of the goals of ÇEKEV, Ayşegül explains, is to help bring women into communication with each other. The association provides a free nursery to help bring women out of the home and reduce their childcare burden. Women also communicate over social media. ÇEKEV advertises products and services at city bazaars (although, Ayşe notes, they get "different reactions from men").

"But in spite of this, we are calling women to the association," she said, "and demand is growing every day. Women are coming."

(ro/fk/cm)