Marginalized or Empowered? Conflict Induced Internally Displaced Kurdish Women's Experiences in Turkey

This study is focusing on the conflict-induced internally displaced Kurdish women’s experiences. There has been an ongoing internal armed conflict in Turkey since 1984 and one of the consequences of this conflict is the internal displacement that occured in 1990s. In the displacement process, women and other family members were victimized. They did not only loose their homelands, but they also had to struggle in the city centers with poverty and discrimination.

After they started to live in the city centers, women may become both marginalized and empowered. The aim of the study is to understand the situations that lead Kurdish women to be marginalized and/or empowered in the cities to which they have been forced to migrate. After the displacement process, which is one of the major victimization processes for these women, some of them may be trapped in ethnic and gender-based discrimination and may become more marginalized in the city centers. But marginalization and empowerment are not fixed categories and there is always a possibility for these women to transform their marginalized position into empowerment. By political engagement, working outside house and/or being head of the househod these women may break the cycle of their marginalization and becomes empowered in the city centers.