The Green Left Party, through which the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) will run in the crucial national elections to be held on 14 May, has the highest percentage of women parliamentary candidates, according to a new report published on Thursday by the Women’s Platform for Equality (EŞİK), an umbrella association for women’s organisations in Turkey.
The platform’s comparison of the candidates of all political parties also indicates that 33 provinces will have no women MPs in the new parliament.
“Despite the fact that there were many women candidates up for nomination, refuting the claim that women do not want to enter politics, it is observed that most parties included very few women in their finalised lists,” EŞİK said.
According to the report, the party with the lowest number of women candidates is the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) with 15.17 percent, followed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) with 18.67 percent.
The Green Left Party has the highest number of female candidates at 43.5 percent, followed by the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) from the left-wing electoral Labour and Freedom Alliance at 42.13 percent.
The umbrella association, representing more than 300 women’s rights groups, also stressed that their analysis revealed that most parties artificially increased the proportions of women in their lists to satisfy gender representation figures but then placed most of them at the bottom of the lists where they are unlikely to be elected.
For instance, the MHP, ally of the ruling AKP, has the lowest percentage of candidates in electable positions at 4 percent, as although there are 91 women on their list, only two of them are in electable positions.
EŞİK’s analysis suggests that if the vote rates of TİP and the Green Left Party increase compared to the 2018 elections, the number of women entering parliament will also increase. Currently, the number of women legislators expected to enter parliament is 117, and the rate of women in parliament will be 19.5 percent. The analysis indicates that 18 out of 20 provinces that have never had a female legislator in the history of the country will not have one in this election either.
