KAMER, a women's center and an experiment in cultivating cosmopolitan norms

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.01.001

In this article, we shall focus on KAMER-Women's Center, the largest women's NGO organized in Eastern and South Eastern Turkey to see how it negotiates and nurtures cosmopolitan norms among women of conflicting persuasions. KAMER is a striking case because it has been successful in bringing together women with deep hostilities and uniting them over human rights based feminist values in a struggle against gender based violence. KAMER thus cultivates cosmopolitan norms through its unique struggle against gender based violence. Its non-violent activism is particularly noteworthy because the organization reaches women in the context of militarized ethnic nationalisms, both Turkish and Kurdish, in Kurdish populated Southeastern Turkey.