Halkevi to protest Antalya women’s only beach as example of ‘gender apartheid’
Female and male protesters are planning to swim together at Antalyaâs Sarısu beach to protest its recent transformation into a womenâs only beach.
The beach was converted into a free-of-charge, womenâs only beach and opened with a ceremony on Aug. 16 by Antalya Municipality.
Members of the Antalya Peopleâs House (Halkevi) and an affiliated organization, the Studentsâ Collective (ÃÄrenci Kolektifi), at Akdeniz University will hold a picnic at the beach on Aug. 24. They will also dance the âhoron,â a folk dance of the Black Sea region, in reaction to a statement by a Samsun mufti who said it was religiously impermissible for men and women to dance the horon together.
Ayten Ceyhan, the head of the Antalya Halkevi, said the womenâs only practice would result in gender apartheid.
âThey are not only opening womenâs only beaches. Statements triggering gender apartheid are being made across Turkey,â she said, referring to the Samsun muftiâs remarks over the horon.
âI suggest that rapes and violence against women should be prevented with deterrent laws instead of separating women and men,â she said.
Mayor Menderes Türel of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) previously said the move was âa necessity to serve all citizens for whom the Constitution stipulates affirmative action,â adding that the municipality had recently transformed Konyaaltı, another beach in the province, into a free-of-charge beach adapted for the use of people with disabilities.
The mayor also recalled that there were womenâs only beaches in Antalya in the 1930s when the Turkish Republicâs founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was...
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