I woke up on my boat the day of my departure for Ankara in Turkey to news that two bombs there had killed almost 100 people and caused horrific injuries to hundreds more. With Ankara in chaos I instead flew into Istanbul with a colleague in order to meet with women’s groups in Turkey, and to join a convening of Syrian women activists that Global Fund for Women co-funded with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and MADRE.

Arriving into Istanbul, we heard the call to prayer as we drove alongside an ancient stone wall. I looked ahead to see temples on the horizon, glowing green and pink in the evening light. The next morning some 60 people gathered, including nine Syrian women activists and sixteen Iraqi women activists. Many more from Syria had tried to come but were stopped for political reasons.

In Istanbul we were joined by photographer Alissa Everett, who had been commissioned by Global Fund for Women to take photos and record narratives of the women we were to meet. Her photo-activism and human rights documentary is captured on her website.

The testimony from the women gathered was searing. In the final hour of our two day conference, a 22 year old Yazidi woman asked to speak. She asked to be called Louzina and for her real name to not be shared publicly. This is her story.

I have come to this conference from Kocho village in the Somal District, which is part of Doagok in Northern Iraq. I am one of the Yazidi girls who survived ISIS. Nearly all of my family, my mother, my father, two of my brothers, were all killed. I have one brother left and my sister who also recently escaped captivity.

Amongst you, here with you, I feel strong. When I return I don’t know if I will feel the same. I was kidnapped on August 14 2014 and was kept captive in Mosul until May 2015. I was being moved from one place to another and the person keeping guard was planting explosive devices for ISIS as we moved. I managed to escape and now I am in a camp with other Yazidi people. I would like to do something for my people. We are a kind people, we are a closed religion. We don’t do any harm, we don’t proselytize. Yet we have no one protecting us, we are attacked for our faith and because we are not Muslim.

They (ISIS) killed all the men, they raped all the women, they stole all our wealth. I don’t know what more they can take from us. Out of 1,700 people they took 1,400 people and killed all but 16 men and children between 12 and 17 were sent to institutes and those under 12 stayed with their families. Many women were taken as sex slaves in captivity. In other areas Yazidi males were forced to convert to Islam and if they refused they were killed.

This was not just ISIS, it was also other tribes. I would like to be an activist and talk about women’s rights. I have finished sixth grade and would like to finish my studies but I can’t continue in the camp. The camp is my home and my lifeline for now.

The man who accompanied ‘Louzina’ to the convening is a Kurdish Muslim who is married with three children and works as a lawyer. He has known many people from the Sinjar Province, an area which includes Yazidi villages. Following the attack by ISIS on Aug 3rd 2014, a close Yazidi friend of his came to Waleed, telling him hysterically that his sister was kidnapped by ISIS. Two days later the friend’s sister escaped and Waleed witnessed her trauma first hand — she was screaming names in total psychological shock.

After a few days she was able to share her story that she had been kidnapped and raped. He was able to gain her trust because he is a friend of her brother and he spoke their Kurdish dialect. Through his work on a project with one of the women’s groups funded by Global Fund for Women that helps support to rape survivors, this man started meeting more and more Yazidi girls and heard their stories. He gained their trust, and survivors started contacting him directly to ask for help if they knew of any other relatives who may have escaped from ISIS.

Coming from a closed society, Yazidi girls and women need special psycho-social support and treatment because of their violent exposure to the outside world and because they are not used to talking openly to others as another layering factor on top of the depth of trauma from being raped. They are often raped viciously and multiple times due to the beliefs of their violators.

As you may know, the Yazidis are a Kurdish speaking people who live principally in northern Iraq. They number approximately 500,000 – 600,000 with another 200,000 settled in other parts of the world. Most of the Yazidi population are poor and oppressed and they hold tightly to their spiritual tradition that they claim is the world’s oldest. They are monotheists, believing in God as creator of the world, which he has placed under the care of seven holy beings or angels, the chief of whom is Melek Taus, the Peacock Angel. Persecution of Yazidis has continued in their home communities within Iraq, under fundamentalist Sunni Muslim revolutionaries. From August 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria targeted Yazidis in its commitment and campaign to “purify” Iraq and neighboring countries of non-Islamic influences.

This convening was an important opportunity to hear testimony directly from women’s rights activists from Syria and Iraq who are at the frontline of the conflict. These women’s human rights defenders represent an early warning system for what is happening in these countries. They also represent a frontline response and the best hope of peacekeeping and sustainable peace in the region. For this reason, it is essential to support them in their organizing for human rights and in taking advantage of the available legal human rights mechanisms to push for reform and justice.

Many of these women risked their lives and their safety by attending the convening. Some won’t be able to return to the same place they left and will travel to a new place as a result of coming. All of them have collectively been involved in such strategies and solutions as creating underground networks for emergency escape, shelters for women who have been violated, medical and health care support, distribution systems for aid distribution and brokering ceasefires and armed conflict.

We need to get more money into the hands of women’s groups to support their advocacy and campaigning as an essential strategy to advance women’s and girls’ human rights and to end the gendercide perpetrated by state actors, militias and other armed groups. I was told that without the funding Global Fund for Women was able to contribute, this convening would not have taken place. These women needed this platform to speak and the strategic space to plan their recommendations for action by the international community to address the human rights crisis faced by Iraqi and Syrian women.

Away from the convening, we had some time to regroup and rest on the weekend. One of my colleagues and I spent a few hours visiting the Blue Mosque, the museum of Hagia Sophia, the Istanbul Hippodrome and the Grand Bazaar.

At Hagia Sophia we craned our necks high to the huge dome and the incredible sight of Christ, the Virgin Mary, saints and angels side by side with Islamic features such as the member (pulpit), mihrab (prayer niche) and four minarets in a holy place. It felt surreal, and this feeling was augmented by the miracle testing spectacle of the Weeping Column. The column comprises a worn copper facing pierced by a hole.

Legend has it that the pillar was blessed by St Gregory the Miracle Worker and that putting one’s finger into the hole can lead to ailments being healed if the finger emerges moist. I watched a long line of hopeful tourists all awaiting their turn to check for their own miracle healing, and of course to snap that ubiquitous selfie of miracle-in-the-making.

Hagia Sophia, whose name means holy wisdom, was originally an Orthodox church that was converted to a mosque when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The new rulers decided to convert the church to a mosque and plaster over the Christian features, not knowing that plaster is one of the best forms of preservation. It remained a mosque until 1931, and in 1935 it was reopened as a museum by the Republic of Turkey.

At the Blue Mosque, I thought I’d made the right decision to bring a scarf and to wear a dress with longish sleeves and below the knee, but it turns out I wasn’t modest enough and so I was given a very flattering faded elasticized skirt to wear over my dress to ensure no flesh was exposed.

“They’re worried about your calves” said the man behind me, who turned out to be a doctor from Adelaide, my home town, who had spoken at the future health leaders gathering that I’m due to speak at in a couple of week’s time in Australia.

Later, in the Grand Bazaar, I had the wonderful experience of discovering cashmere slippers, every kind of Turkish delights in the most sticky and stretchy forms and a herbalist who intoxicated me with aromatic herbal teas and potions for every kind of ailment.
“You try, it is the most wonderful tea!” he said before reaching for another blend. Soon rosebuds and citrus and cardamom and lavender were floating softly into little bags and, after we left, I turned back to see my tea magician waving to me with both hands.

I’ll be sharing another letter from Turkey as well as from Lebanon and Egypt to capture some of the stories and searing experiences of women’s groups and human rights defenders we’re meeting with on this trip.

Listening to these women’s stories – they are at once heartbreaking, infuriating, inspiring, devastating – affirms our responsibility to do all that we can to change the course of history.

Jane Sloane
Turkey