“This victory is the common victory of all women of Turkey, ” Selahattin Demirtaş, co-president of the Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP), said in a television address to millions of citizens awaiting the outcome of the national elections on 7 June.

As a young feminist, I was pleasantly surprised when the election results delivered a blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism.

It’s important to be aware of the weight of Demirtaş’s words. In an environment where politicians rarely recognise women in the public sphere other than as someone’s mother, wife or daughter, his words were revolutionary.

Official speeches concerning women in Turkey are delivered to console grieving mothers when sons die in the conflict-ridden south-east, when routine gendercide claims the life of someone’s wife, or when a mourning father is interviewed about the rape of his daughter.

Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP) and his socially conservative electoral base does not recognise the importance of female participation in the public and political sphere. Last November, while attending a women’s rights conference, the president said he did not believe men and women are equal and that feminists don’t accept the concept of motherhood.

The secular, modern, urban elite is not so promising on gender, either. The Kemalist section of the population still backs a discourse suggesting that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – a male politician, naturally – “gave” women constitutional rights, but more specifically the right to vote and be elected, in the 1930s.

Consequently, until the arrival of the HDP, there has never been a party recognising that women have struggled to assert their rights throughout Turkey’s history.

The Kemalists have failed to acknowledge the struggle of Ottoman women, who sought labour rights, political representation and the end of forced marriage and polygamy as early as the 18th century. Islamists and secularists, meanwhile, have failed to recognise that Turkish women acquired their most fundamental rights through setting up associations and trade unions, organising marches and writing in newspapers – even at the cost of imprisonment and violence. It was not because they were helped by male politicians.

The record number of women elected as MPs is the result of an enduring struggle over generations, despite entrenched gender violence, institutionalised impunity to perpetrators, and a political system that arbitrarily restricts women’s participation in the public sphere.

On election day, the behaviour of one MP, the AKP’s Muzaffer Çakar, was emblematic of the discourse pertaining to women’s place in politics. He told the women of Karahasan village in Muş to go home and send their husbands to vote on their behalf.

The HDP’s victory is not just groundbreaking, it’s revolutionary. Not only because Turkey will have the highest number of women in its history in the next parliament – almost a fifth of MPs – but also because a party is attempting to challenge the dominant political discourse and gender discrimination.

The HDP is the only party with a “declaration on women”. In its official party documnents, it calls itself a “women’s party”. It promises a women’s ministry to address gendercide and institutional gender discrimination.

The election result has given me hope for Turkey’s future. However, this hope istempered by an awareness of the persistent challenges that female politicians face. They will have to operate in an environment where their legitimate roles will be challenged by high-level government officials. They will have to acknowledge Turkey’s role in the Syrian conflict. The newly elected female MPs cannot ignore the suffering of thousands of Syrian women that is partly due to Turkey’s support for radical groups in Syria. Additionally, women will have to play an active role in the suspended peace process with Turkey’s Kurdish minority, to ensure that a gender-sensitive approach is implemented. The responsibility on their shoulders is immeasurable.

Filiz Kerestecioğlu, a feminist human rights lawyer who is now an HDP MP, said before the elections: “We deserve happiness and freedom.” Keep an eye on Turkey – a gender revolution that could have an impact on the wider region is on its way.

Semanur Karaman is coordinator of the women human rights defenders programme at the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (Awid)

