User:Yug/Canan Arın

Canan Arın (b. 1942, Ankara) is a Turkish constitutional lawyer, women rights advocate and authors best known for being a founding member of the Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter Foundation (1990), the Association for Supporting and Training Women Candidates (1997) and the Istanbul Bar Association Women’s Rights Implementation Center (1998) while Turkey transitioned toward democracy. Due to her advocacy, Arın was often the target of intimidation by politicians and others.

Career
After graduating from Istanbul University’s Faculty of Law, she studied constitutional law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1976, she returned to Turkey and began working as a lawyer. She has said that in the early 1980s after meeting Şirin Tekeli upon her invitation, she started taking an active role in the women’s movement in Turkey. Arın describes her transformation in the following terms: “I belong to a generation that grew up with the illusion that women and men in Turkey are equal. I have always thought that we are equal. But after a careful analysis of the facts on the ground, I saw that this is not the case at all. Although the Constitution [of Turkey] requires that everyone be equal before the law without gender distinctions, Turkey’s civil family law was the first to violate the equality provision set forth in the constitution. Secondly, the penal code is also in such violation, meaning that the laws actually go against the constitution.” It is in such terms that she describes the relationship between her identity as a lawyer and how she began taking up the struggle against gender inequality. Arın was among the founding members of the Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter Foundation in 1990, the Association for Supporting and Training Women Candidates in 1997 and the Istanbul Bar Association Women’s Rights Implementation Center in 1998. Although the Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter Foundation was founded for the purpose of carrying out activities to prevent violence against women and provide legal, psychological and residential support (shelters) for women that are subjected to male violence, the opening of a women’s shelter was delayed because of financial limitations. In the meantime, Arın traveled to Sweden to learn more about how to open and run a shelter. After Arın and other activists had put much effort into the project, the first women’s shelter was opened in 1995.

According to the information provided by Arın, the Mor Çatı Women’s Shelter Foundation offers services not only to women but also to children who are subjected to violence. In the past 25 years, solidarity has been established with approximately 35,000 women and children, and 379 women and 453 children have been offered shelter support. In the year 2014 alone, the foundation received applications for shelter from 832 women and children; in the same year, shelter support was provided to 29 women and 31 children, and around 2,043 interviews were held with women who were victims of violence.

As a result of the knowledge she acquired through her efforts, Arın worked with the European Council’s Expert Group on Gender Equality and Violence against Women between 1994 and 1997. She was also part of the official delegation at the +5 New York meeting that was held in 2000 as a follow-up to the 1995 World Conference on Women organized by the United Nations in Beijing, which she also attended. Additionally, in 2005 she was in the group that presented a shadow report on behalf of non-governmental organizations during a meeting at the United Nations as regards the Women’s Platform of the Turkish Penal Code.

Arın has written numerous articles about the issue of violence against women and she is one of the co-authors of the book A Tale of Warm Homes: Domestic Violence and Harassment. As a result of her activism in battling violence against women, Arın has often been under threat of being put on trial and she has drawn the ire of the political establishment.