It took only 45 seconds. In the early hours of 17 August 1999, an earthquake struck Turkey’s Marmara region, killing tens of thousands of people, including Selma Demirelli’s husband. Like the millions of other survivors, her life would never be the same.
After getting through the initial shock, Demirelli found salvation in helping others, signing up to work as a field coordinator for an NGO, the Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work. She soon witnessed the many and varied problems earthquake survivors endure; she also learned that while traumas caused by natural disasters are in theory gender neutral, they often affect women, children and the handicapped more than others.
Turkey has equal rights of inheritance, but there are still certain patriarchal legal practices that work against women. A widow without a child, for instance, becomes obliged to share her husband’s property with his relatives. As it turned out, Demirelli was legally entitled to keep her house, but the realisation that not everyone was so lucky prompted her to found the country’s first women’s housing cooperative to empower women as property owners.
She made countless trips to the capital city of Ankara to secure the allotment of real estate, then enlisted NGOs and institutions such as Istanbul Technical University to help with aspects such as housing design. Meanwhile, she became involved in another housing project where she convinced a local charity group composed of businessmen to construct houses for 200 families.
Demirelli also founded the Water Lily Women’s Cooperative, which initially started off as a childcare centre to provide day care for children but today the activities are no longer limited to children. Mothers use the free time they now have to attend training programs—in finance, business development, entrepreneurship—that enable them to join the work force.
Most recently, Demirelli has turned her focus to projects to end violence against women, which has reached alarming levels in Turkey. In addition to raising awareness, she is seeking new approaches to combat this problem.
That 1999 earthquake may have destroyed much of Demirelli’s world, but it did not destroy her. Instead, she used that tragedy as a springboard to help build better lives for so many others.
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Source: Egypt Independent, 8 March 2018