6.3. The (de)politicizing effects on CSOs working on Kurdish rights
6.3.3. Mazlumder (Association for Human Rights and Solidarity for the Oppressed, İnsan Hakları
6.3.3. Mazlumder (Association for Human Rights and Solidarity for the Oppressed, İnsan Hakları ve Mazlumlar İçin Dayanışma Derneği)
The organization and its non‐EU funded work
I include the Muslim organization Mazlumder in my study as it is the only Muslim human rights organization that once received funding from the EU. However, it is also the only organization – besides Amargi – that otherwise opposed funding. 54 people founded it in 1991 at a time of oppression of Kurds and Muslims. Mazlumder considers the oppression of the Kurds, Christians and Armenians, Alevis and Muslims to be the biggest problem of the 1990s (Interview N 2013). Already
164 then Mazlumder worked on the Kurdish issue. It held a Kurdish forum in 1993 and 2012 (Mazlumder 2012a). After the soft coup of 1997, Muslims wanting to show their religion came under increasing pressure again. The military closed down religious schools and brought down the Muslim governing party of Erbakan (White 2013: 39–43; Hale and Özbudun 2010: 4–5; Interview N 2013). Mazlumder runs a campaign on the so‐called 28 February demanding that all political decisions from that day are reversed (Koçer 2013). It was after the soft coup that Mazlumder started to fight for women who wanted to wear a headscarf as it was banned by the military (Interview N 2013).
In 2013, the organization had 27 branches all over Turkey and employed twelve people in Istanbul and six people in Ankara. Mazlumder had 4,000 registered members in 2013. The CSO works together with judicial experts, academics, and journalists in specific projects (Interview N 2013).
Mazlumder hardly received any external funding between 2002 and 2013. The CSO collects enough membership fees and donations to survive: “We do not take funding to be independent” (Interview N 2013). As I will discuss later, Mazlumder’s Izmir branch ran two EIDHR projects which were strongly criticized from within the organization (Interview N 2013). Generally, Muslim organizations have been better off since the AKP took over the government in 2002. The AKP promoted the role of Muslim charitable organizations as providers of social services and made it thus easier for them to acquire donations (Şen et al. 2009: 269–270).
Mazlumder describes its goals as “defending human rights” and “the development of human rights and freedoms, ending all kinds of human rights violations”. Mazlumder supports the rights of all “oppressed people no matter what form of oppression whether religious, ethnic, cultural, sexual or other identity differences” (Mazlumder 2014a). In fact, the Turkish word “mazlum” means
“oppressed”. Among its activities are the organization of seminars, conferences, panels, film and theater events (Mazlumder 2014a).
Different than other CSOs studied, Mazlumder has direct connections to the government. The head of the Istanbul branch is friends with former foreign minister and now Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Erdoğan is a former member of the organization. However, the NGO stresses that this does not influence its independency (Interview N 2013). Outside the scope of EU projects, representatives of Mazlumder were part of the negotiations to settle the Kurdish conflict: “For instance there are 67 people that are distributed to the regions of Turkey. They are selected by the government to give support to the negotiation process. There are seven persons from Mazlumder”
(Interview N 2013). Generally the organization is often asked to play an intermediary role between the government and other groups of civil society (Interview N 2013). The close political ties with the AKP have not prevented the organization from raising criticism.
The website of Mazlumder provides a lot of information on its activities including publications such as reports, books, brochures and press statements. The organization monitors and reports on human rights violations. The website gives up‐to‐date news on specific developments. Since 2009 Mazlumder published on a daily basis all the news on human rights violations reported in Turkish media (Mazlumder 2014b). It published yearly reports on human rights violations in Turkey between 2002 and 2013 similar to İHD. Mazlumder’s reports included general human rights violations such as the violation of freedom of speech and torture. Mazlumder’s reports focused more on religious rights, the discrimination of women with headscarves and their access to education (Biten 2011).
Monthly reports documented cases of “honor killings” (Mazlumder 2007). Mazlumder published
“balance sheets” with an overview of the numbers of specific human rights violations (Mazlumder 2011). The reports dealt with the situation in prisons as well, for instance reports written together with İHD (Mazlumder and İHD 2006). It further documented the events and human rights violations that took place around the Kurdish new year’s (Nevroz) celebrations on 22 March in 2008 (Mazlumder 2008a).
Also similar to other NGOs, Mazlumder sent observers to the Gezi demonstrations and made a report. The NGO concluded that the critique of the government’s neo‐liberal politics was justified and criticized the violence of the police towards the protestors. However, the CSO balanced its criticism of the state’s reaction with blaming the “terrorist and marginalized groups” for dominating the protests in the end and having “destroyed public and private goods”. Mazlumder further observed “incidents especially to young women with headscarves” (Interview N 2013). My interview partner stressed that the role of Mazlumder was one of an observer: “We don’t intervene in such kind of political processes” (Interview N 2013). Mazlumder tries to keep distance from the government, occasionally criticizes it but also takes a more supportive stance towards it than other NGOs. Similar to other NGOs however, it critically observes and comments on the ongoing process of making the new constitution (Mazlumder 2012c). Mazlumder does not only focus on Turkey but also observed the human rights situation in other Muslim majority countries (Mazlumder 2014c). For instance the NGO wrote a report on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza strip (Mazlumder 2009b).
Its press statements criticized Israel and demanded from the Turkish government to oppose Israel and help Palestinians (Mazlumder 2009a).
In addition to the numerous reports, Mazlumder published around 100 press statements every year to participate in public debates. Its press declarations deal with Turkish as well as international issues. A press statement announced a report on the Ergenekon trials stressing that the investigations were important for the future of Turkish democracy (Mazlumder 2008b). Similar to İHD, it called on politics not to forget the victims of the Uludere events and cohosted an event to
166 which the victims’ mothers were invited (Mazlumder 2012b, 2013). A press release together with other organizations called on politics to guarantee unlimited freedom to wear the headscarf and criticized the “demagogy of the opposition” in this question (Özgürder et al. 2008). Mazlumder organized conferences on the headscarf issue (Mazlumder 2004). It also issued a statement regarding the abortion debate in which it distanced itself from Erdoğan’s comparison of abortions and the Uludere incident but stressed that it considers abortions to violate human rights (Ünsal 2012).
Overall, Mazlumder’s activities focused on political participation in the form of monitoring human rights violations or publishing statements. With the AKP in government, Mazlumder was much less under pressure than in previous times. In fact, it has close relations to the AKP which creates risks of co‐option. On the other hand, it criticized governmental policies. Instead of conducting projects, it focused on participating in political debates, running own campaigns such as on 28 February or the headscarf issue, and monitoring human rights violations – classical liberal activities that politicize issues. Although it has a different position on the abortion debate, Mazlumder tried to introduce a more nuanced and less emotional point of view than the government discourse. Overall, the organization is strongly involved in discursive struggles.
EU funded projects
Generally, Mazlumder supports the EU accession process: “With the EU policies we have many matching points in their human rights approach” (Interview N 2013). Yet, Mazlumder is critical of specific EU policies such as homosexuality which it opposes. For this reason and because Mazlumder does not want to appear dependent or corrupted, it generally rejects EU funding although Mazlumder had conducted two EIDHR funded projects. They were strongly criticized within the organization and thus the CSO did not apply for EU funds again (Interview N 2013). It is very hard to find information on the two projects and my interview partner could not or did not want to tell me much either. I can only rely on the information on the website of the EIDHR.
According to the EU site, Mazlumder Ankara conducted an EIDHR funded project in the area of refugees in 2004. The project documented the psycho‐social situation of refugees in Turkey and to draft recommendations for the Turkish government to improve the situation (EU Delegation to Turkey 2014b). The Izmir branch of Mazlumder carried out the project “Training of Muslim Functionaries (Imams) in Turkey on Basic National and International Human Rights Standards” in 2005. Here, imams are constituted as human rights defenders – even though this term is not mentioned – as they are supposed to “spread” human rights and freedoms:
“This project aimed to raise the awareness of Imams in several provinces of Turkey on human rights and freedoms with a view to spread and encourage the upholding of these values by the Cemaat via Imams, as well as to contribute to the correction of misconception about religion and human rights”
(EU Delegation to Turkey 2014b).
It appears that the representatives of the organization rather prefer not to talk about the project as it created so much opposition within the NGO. However, within the official project descriptions the EU’s human rights discourse was taken up.
Mazlumder generally did not work in the format of projects. In the almost complete absence of EU funds there are no signs of depoliticizing the issues at hand. Overall, the organization does not work with neo‐liberal technologies in any area. Instead it constitutes civil society and the individual in a liberal way. Individuals and civil society demand that human rights are not violated. They control state policy and take part in political debates. Similar to Amargi – although representing a very different political position – Mazlumder opposed EU funds due to political reasons.
The case of Mazlumder shows that CSOs rejecting EU funds – as well as other international funding – are unlikely to incorporate neo‐liberal rationalities. In the case of Mazlumder as well as Amargi they reject neo‐liberal ideas in the first place (see Ketola 2011). They stress the liberal role of civil society instead. Further, the cases of Mazlumder and Amargi suggest that the possibility to apply for funding creates conflicts within organizations because they are forced to take a position on whether to apply for funding. Financially, Mazlumder was in an advantaged position as it could afford to work without EU funds. The favorable political context gives the CSO more security as well.
6.3.4. Conclusions on the (de)politicizing effects on CSOs working on Kurdish rights