Let’s Meet at the 2nd International Feminist Forum!

Kaos GL invites you to the International Feminist Forum to come up with a feminist stance against the marginalization of feminism.

 

Having organized it as part of the International Meeting Against Homophobia (IDAHO) since 2006, Kaos GL has turned the Feminist Forum to an international event in 2012. This year’s Forum will be held with the presence of women from Turkey as well as 14 other countries between March 16-17.

  

Calling feminists from Turkey, Middle East and Mediterranean to unite against and share practices on various forms of conservatisms, Kaos GL is bringing women’s groups from the neighboring counties to Ankara this year.

 

Hosted by Ankara University Women’s Studies Department, Kaos GL is organizing the Forum on March 16-17. Taking place at Ahmet Taner Kışlalı Conference Room, women’s organizations from Turkey, Serbia, Albania, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon and Egypt will be at the conference.

 

Women from Armenia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia and Palestine, all participating in the Regional Network Against Homophobia, will also be present at the Forum.

 

The event will start with “Anti-War Feminist Forum” on March 16th at 12:00. The opening speaker will be Lepa Mladjenovic, a lesbian feminist activist from Serbia. Mladjenovic will talk on her decades-long experiences on surviving as a woman, as a lesbian during the war regime in Serbia and nationalisms that the region’s women have suffered. The second guests of the panel will be Yüksel Mutlu, Deputy Co-Chairperson of BDP (Peace and Democracy Party).

 

On the same day, the event will continue with “Lesbian Feminist Forum”. Lesbian activists from Tunisia, Algeria, Serbia and Albania will speak on the latest developments on the lives of LGBTs and women after the Tunisian revolution, the joint activism grounds for lesbians and women’s movement in Algeria, the radical lesbian groups against Serbia’s Church and nationalism and being a women and lesbian in today’s Albania.

 

The closing panel of the day will be “Labour Forum”. Kaos GL’s lawyer Oya Aydın, Necla Akgökçe from Petrol-iş Women’s Magazine and Gülay Toksöz from Ankara University Labour Economics and Industrial Relations Department will be the speakers of the panel.

 

Kaos GL will dedicate the 2nd day of the event (March 17, Sunday) to two “Alliance Forum”s for a united strenght and freedoms. Feminists from Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey will be present.

 

International Alliance Forum will start at 14:00 with the participation of Kholoud Bidak from Nazra Feminist Studies and Maha Youssef from Bedayaa LGBT Organization in Egypt and Hiba Abbani from KAFA (Enough) Violence & Exploitation in Lebanon. Discussions on women’s demands from the Constutituion and Civil Code in Lebanon, sexual assaults and rape crimes against women following the Egyptian uprisings and the role of women and LGBTs during the Egyptian Revolution will take place.

 

The local Alliance Forum, moderated by İlknur Üstün, will host the speakers Alev Özkazanç from Ankara University Women’s Studies Department, Zozan Özgökçe from Van Women’s Association and Gülnur Elçik from Solidarity with Women Foundation.

 

To come up with a feminist stance against the marginalization of feminism, Kaos GL’s Advisory Board member Simten Coşar invites all to the International Feminist Forum:

 

“While politics are sequeezed in between liberalism and conservatism in Turkey and in general globally, it is possible to structure our search for rights through feminism. Our goal is to search for remedies of living together neither without our identites nor while being locked up in them.”