Mor Salkım Women’s Solidarity Association is an independent feminist civil society organization founded by human rights activists on the 27th April 2012, in Bursa (Turkey). Mor Salkım joined the WAVE Network in 2018. The association’s purpose is to promote gender equality and combat violence against women.
This organisation has a 24/7 hotline, accessed not only by women in the province of Bursa but from different parts of Turkey, where a a team of volunteers and specialists provides support to women, children and other vulnerable groups such as migrants, refugees and trans people undergoing violence. Mor Salkım has also a counselling center where free legal and psychological support is provided.
Mission: A non-violent world where women and children are not discriminated because of their gender, and gender equality exists.
Vision: To become a national and international women’s association working on elimination of discrimination based on gender inequality, combating all forms of violence against women, whilst ensuring a gender mainstreaming strategy.
Lobbying advocacy areas: Early and forced marriages, women’s participation in social life, incest, harassment, rape, prevention of violence against women and domestic violence, combating discrimination, mobbing, providing shelters, first step stations, working on increasing the number of the monitoring centers and (either) the counselling centres, women’s decision-making mechanisms.
Values:
- People-oriented: Respecting human rights and adopting this behavior
- Nonviolence: To ensure that the factors supporting violence are not present in the organisation’s tools of visibility, language and communication
- Equalitarian: Not to discriminate because of race, language, religion, color, gender identity, sexual orientation, political thought, philosophical belief, etc.
- Democratic: To ensure democratic participation with freedom of thought and expression in making decisions and sharing ideas
- Participatory: To get the ideas and suggestions of internal and external stakeholders. To participate in networks and platforms that support the aforementioned mission.
Also in Turkey, the Covid-19 pandemic is deepening already existing inequalities and gender-based violence is increasing exponentially. The Mor Salkım hotline has experienced a tremendous increase in the number of calls from women seeking help. Since the lockdown on March 11th, in a period of 2 months, 379 women, 82 men and 2 children have reached Mor Salkım Women’s Solidarity Association. 75% of women have requested to settle in the shelter.
#WAVEmembers #25yearsWAVE #feministsunite
