Senem Gul

Senem Gul is enabling women who live in the economically disadvantaged and violence-ridden districts of Istanbul to solve communal problems for the betterment of their and their children’s lives. Senem is building a self-governed community of diverse women by training and organizing them to act on the issues they care about. In doing so, she creates participatory processes so that women can develop the self-confidence and leadership skills to bring lasting change to their neighborhoods.

In a poor and violent district of Istanbul, characterized by large migrant populations, Senem has encouraged women to come together, form a cooperative and collectively pursue improvements in their communities—including schools, playgrounds, parks, public transportation, walkways, and more. Nurtepe is an area of Istanbul that is full of prejudice, ethnic and political diversity and also suffers from the absence of effective public services. Her approach empowers women through education and skills training, and focuses on creating a communal identity for the solution of community problems. Senem believes that success in neighborhoods like Nurtepe will be a building block for effective citizen participation and improved governance at the national and regional level.

Senem is dedicated to cultivating leadership among women. Of Sunni Turkish ethnicity, she immigrated in 1998 from Kahramanmaras, a southeastern city of Turkey, and has lived in Nurtepe ever since. Beginning with a culturally and ethnically diverse group of women, Senem opened a center initially focused on childhood development and learning. Then she began hosting women and offering workshops covering a wide range of topics so that in the process of working together, women would build a basis for reducing community strife through mutual understanding. Women work especially hard on negotiation and communication, which has already resulted in marked improvements in the community and reduction of violence. They also learn about finance and governance in 10-member democratic savings groups.

From an initial group of 19, today more than 800 women are involved in two centers—one of which is in a neighboring district. After only three years, the success of her cooperative has already inspired replicas in other parts of the city and the country. Her idea has been widely publicized and generated interest from women’s groups in 16 different cities in Turkey.

Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey, is a magnet for immigrants from around the country and beyond. With tens of thousands of new arrivals each year from different economic, cultural, and political backgrounds, increasing stress is placed on the social fabric of the city’s many communities. Ethnic and religious diversity create tensions that frequently lead to violence as these groups compete for jobs and new opportunities. The local and national government is unable to keep up with the needs of the newcomers, and citizens feel disenfranchised. Decision-making power at the community level often rests in the hands of different factions that rely on violence and fear tactics.

Nurtepe, one of the many suburban communities surrounding Istanbul, is a particularly violence-ridden neighborhood, where as a consequence of residents’ discontent to the state policies and acts, riots are not uncommon. Nurtepe’s ghettoes are segregated by ethnicity or religion—whether Kurdish, Arabic, Sunni, or Shia—and resemble small, poor micro-communities isolated from the rest of the world. Historical disputes are especially heated between Alevis, an Anatolian Shia sect that is quite secular in Turkey (unlike Middle Eastern Shias) and Sunnis, Turkey’s majority sect. In addition, gun ownership in Nurtepe and similar districts in Kagithane is high (higher even than the Turkish national average of 10 percent), and consequently murder rates are also high. Young men develop the “us and them” mentality from an early age.

Women and children suffer disproportionately from the climate of districts like Nurtepe. Women, already discriminated against and isolated in their homes have no means to improve their situations or become engaged in community activities. Yet with few government programs and little support from civil society in Nurtepe, women represent the most likely force for change if given the opportunity.

Children from poorer neighborhoods do not get the kind of education that their wealthier counterparts do. Pre-school and kindergarten education—which are so critical for school readiness—are not available for most of Nurtepe’s young children. As a result, its primary schools are full of non-performing children, the beginnings of a cycle of educational failure that feeds the hopelessness, economic stagnation, and ultimately, the violence of these communities.

Senem, a resident of Nurtepe and an immigrant from Kahramanmaras, decided that women must play a more active role in creating a healthy community landscape, and set out to do so. Her strategy involves bringing a diverse group of women together, providing them with basic education, training, and jobs, and pushing them to take responsibility and leadership for improving the world they live in and the world their children will grow up in. Senem is setting out to prove that if individuals from as diverse and violent a community as Nurtepe can organize together and empower women, the there is similar hope for the impoverished Muslim world.

Senem establishes spaces for women from all religious, political and cultural backgrounds to think, pressure, and act collectively about issues that concern them. The first such space Senem negotiated with the muhtar, or local administrator, to donate for women to prioritize and design activities. An initial group of 19—including Sunnis, Alevis, Turks from Greece, a Bulgarian, Kurdish, communists, Islamists and nationalists—reflected a microcosm of Turkey. The first discussions were painfully slow, but Senem pushed for the women to find a common ground and identify the problems they shared and could begin working towards solving. To help facilitate the meetings and overcome deep prejudices, she asked for help from local opinion, religious and political leaders of each group. What Senem calls “consciousness raising sessions” have a similar sequence: first make women aware of themselves as individuals and their rights as individuals, second help them see the commonalities of their problems and needs, and finally design action plans for violation of rights or negligence of state services.

Each of Senem’s community centers include a child development component where children can come and go, play and learn, and become better prepared for entry into the school system. Educational professionals are brought in and paid for collectively by the participating women. Plus, the child center gives women the opportunity to themselves learn and receive training, and develop action plans for specific community betterment issues.

This is the central effort of Senem’s centers: give women the education and tools to stand up for their rights and take responsibility and leadership for improving their communities. Senem along with a small group of other women began attending women’s leadership trainings from Ashoka Fellow Sengul Akcar. They brought back their learnings and now lead seminars themselves. Topics range from communication and rights training to health and nutrition. Sessions have been led about what to do in cases of domestic violence and how to best work with policemen. Women also learn how to write petitions to local authorities, and practice how to negotiate with government authorities when the inevitable first answer they receive is “no.” Since the first center was opened, Senem has been able to recruit an increasing number of educators to volunteer their services and lead a workshop in their area of expertise.

To attract women from in and around Nurtepe to participate, Senem sends invitations advertising the child development component and the menu of available activities and seminars. As women get more deeply involved, Semen brings them into a formal process where they are required to read and agree to the principles lad out by the center. They attend orientation sessions, followed by more formal training sessions, and then are paired with a more veteran member. At the end of their “internship” they choose a task force and begin working on a particular issue they care about deeply. The goal is that in time they will act as a trainer for new members, thus ensuring the groups of women grows naturally. Senem began with 19 women and has increased the number to over 400 in her first center, again from all ethnicities and backgrounds.

Senem has also worked hard to gain approval from women’s husbands, including by organizing picnics where husbands see what kinds of non-threatening activities their wives are engaged in. Some men subsequently volunteered to paint and repair parts of the women’s center.

As the group of engaged women grew, Senem formed and legally registered a cooperative called “First Step.” Senem along with 59 founding members from the community, with their “small but first step”, also convinced the mayor to endorse their work as part of the solution for several problems in the region. Meanwhile Senem has established a saving fund where a group of 10 women contribute $3 monthly and design their own rules in addition to getting basic accountancy training and experience. The money offers members of each group emergency loans when needed in difficult circumstances relating to health or family issues.

Nurtepe has already changed noticeably since Senem’s empowerment training began. More regular garbage collection, extended bus routes, more regular neighborhood cleaning and beautification, refurbishment of an abandoned park, and safer pedestrian crossways and walking paths are just some of the improvements driven through by the efforts of Senem and the women involved with her cooperative. In addition, this group of women has been invited by the Municipality to help run a local tea garden.

Finally, Senem and others have become active in parent-teacher associations and are pressuring school administrators for major improvements both in school curriculum and resources—most notably, new libraries with books for children of all ages.

In a very short period, a second center was founded within the region. The number of women involved now has grown to over 800 in both centers. As a result of press coverage of her work in Istanbul, women from 16 different cities around Turkey have made visits to observe her operations. Senem intends to expand these centers to all 19 districts of the region of Kagithane in the coming years. She is also looking to spread her model to Middle East and impoverished Muslim World. Senem believes that when citizens—and women in particular—are empowered at the neighborhood level, then change at a much larger scale is possible across the globe.

Senem was born into a poor family from southeast Turkey. After graduating from junior high school, she was forced to leave school because she was the eldest child and needed to take care of the house, and her sisters and brothers.

She pursued special training courses in typing and sewing, and graduated with the best remarks. Then she started as a sewing tutor in a small village of Kahramanmaras, one of the southeastern cities, and later got a job at the Singer Company as a sewing instructor. She took a special exam to be accepted in the public service because this was her dream, but despite her success was devastated when not appointed for any position. After getting married, she had to immigrate to Istanbul with her husband where her second son was born. She worked as a cleaning lady, in a textile workshop and took care of an elderly lady for some time.

Senem has always been interested in public service and in helping people, particularly those that are marginalized. Living in a dangerous and poor neighborhood of Istanbul got her thinking about what she could do to help herself and the women around her. As they were all facing similar problems, she made an effort to become closer with them and gain trust. She soon learned that they all wanted the same things: first, a safe place where they can educate and play with their kids, and second, to feel empowered to solve problems that affected their lives on a daily basis.

After discovering that a cousin of hers was preparing her masters thesis on Women’s Studies, she offered her help in copying and binding. Through this thesis, she became aware of Ashoka Fellow Sengul Akcar and enrolled in several courses and seminars on women’s leadership at her foundation. Based on this initial exposure to the issues, she took initiative and convinced the women of the community that they were the only ones who could solve their problems. She then went door-to-door and invited women for a communal meeting.

Although her efforts threatened her marriage, she pushed on and was able to convince women and their husbands that her cooperative was good for everyone. Aside from working closely with her two women’s centers, Senem acts as the class representative at a primary school where her elder son studies.