Derya Ceylan/JINHA

ISTANBUL – Academics say the HDP's economic policies of promoting women's employment and right to organize, as laid out in their election platform, promise a real change for precarious women workers in Turkey.

The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is hoping to make a radical change in Turkey in the upcoming June 7 elections. The party has emphasized woman-friendly policies, including by releasing a 30-page Women's Election Manifesto on April 22. The manifesto, which addresses women's diverse identities and needs, includes specific economic recommendations to fight the exploitation of women's waged and unwaged labor.

Seven out of 10 women in Turkey can't enter the labor market, says economy expert Ümit İzmen. 12 million women work in the home in Turkey. This means that one in every three women is working for free in Turkey.

"These women have to care for children, the elderly and the sick," said Ümit. "When women can enter the workplace, the majority of the time they have to work for lower wages and in precarious work, or they work for free in their husbands' or fathers' businesses." 50% of women lack social security in the country. The HDP manifesto proposes including domestic work in social security programs.

Ümit noted the "strong emphasis on male-female unity and the principle of positive discrimination" in the HDP manifesto. HDP policies include the principle of Gender Sensitive Budgeting, in which all central and local budgets are prepared with support for women in mind, and the proposal to increase women's numerical employment and decision-making power in state bodies.

The Manifesto also has a distinct section addressing the issues faced by the millions of migrant agricultural laborers in Turkey. Azize Aslan, working on the topic for her doctorate in political science and public administration at Istanbul University, says no legal measures have been taken so far to improve the working conditions of these precarious laborers.

"This is why, according to the approximate figures that many research projects give, every year one million people leave the places where they live and flood to the agricultural basins," she said. "And if we consider that it's men who bring in work all year and it's men who can't leave the places where they live because they have continual work, we can see that much of migrant labor is done by women."

The manifesto's central proposal for women migrant agricultural laborers is "work where they live." "This is a reference to women's employment," said Azize. "Besides this, [the manifesto] says that there will be legal changes and work with unions to ensure these workers' right to organize." Azize explains that this provision targets the phenomenon of the "middleman" or "ambassador" who coordinates agricultural work.

"The phenomenon of the middleman is an important one for seasonal laborers, because it's the field owner and the ambassador who make the work arrangement. The money gets handed over to the ambassador, who can then behave arbitrarily, giving as low a wage and employment possibility as he wants to the people he wants," she said.

Azize noted that the HDP's manifesto explicitly considers these problems. "The HDP really could solve this with the self-organizing of agricultural laborers and the cooperativization they mention in all their economic programs," she said.

(fk/cm)