Arguing that it is not right to actually put a quota on the number of women candidates -- as some countries do -- to ensure women’s participation in elections, the AK Party is nevertheless encouraging women to get involved in politics.
Stating that more than half of the 38 million voters in Turkey are women, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he supports more female participation in local elections and thinks that the number of women in local administrative bodies should increase to the same level as in Europe -- where the number of women mayors is about 10 percent of the total.

Dividing the country into 12 regions, the AK Party has appointed three deputies for each region. Ayşe Akbaş, Azize Sibel Gönül, Cahit Bağcı, Çağla A. Özyavuz, Emin Nedim Öztürk, Fatih Öztürk, Hasan Altan, Hüseyin Gülsün, Hüsnü Ordu, İlhan Evcin, M. Cemal Öztaylan, Mehmet Ceylan and Mehmet Halit Demir are among the deputies charged with urging women to participate in local elections; all have experience with local administration. These deputies are tasked with listing the people who are favored in local communities and issuing the lists to AK Party headquarters. In particular, the deputies should focus their attention on regional female leaders of various occupations, including professors, doctors and NGO leaders.

The AK Party has been organizing courses and seminars for local administrative bodies in many provinces of Anatolia on the upcoming elections in order to give potential candidates a “political certificate” and accept them as official members of the AK Party. While men will be charged YTL 500, women will have the chance to attend these courses free of charge as a way to encourage female participation.

There are some criteria to be a candidate for the AK Party in the upcoming local elections. To be a mayoral candidate, the first condition is to have graduated from university. The AK Party also requires that a candidate “be a respected member of society” and that he/she “have a vision.”

Research on women in local administrative bodies internationally, locally

As a first step into including more women in local elections, the AK Party has conducted research on the number of elected women in the world, focusing particularly on Europe. The research indicated the respective percentages of women and men in municipalities and city councils. The research revealed that nearly 90 percent (90,613) of all mayors in the world are men while nearly 10 percent (9,013) of mayors are women. Nearly 20 percent of all city councilors in the world are women while nearly 80 percent are men.

In Europe -- where women's rights are considered strong - again, nearly 90 percent (67,398) of mayors are men while only 10 percent (7,900) are women. Nearly 75 percent of city councilors in Europe are men while 25 percent are women.

Turkey is among the countries with the least number of women representatives in local administrations. In Turkey, only 18 of mayors elected in the previous local elections on March 18, 2004 were women. Among 3,225 women mayors elected, only two of them are AK Party members. Additionally, 817 women city councilors were elected, 316 of which are members of the AK Party.

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