Bicycle activist hopes for a better Turkey for women cyclists

Turkey's first regulations on bicycle lanes and parking spots made the news last week. This raised more than a few eyebrows in a country where it's not uncommon to see parked cars on pavements leaving no room for pedestrians, or aggressive car traffic making its own rules. The new regulations require an increased number of bicycle lanes and parking spots, connection of these lanes to mass transportation hubs, and even an ambitious call for the construction of roads and modification of buses to accommodate bicycle lanes.

P?nar Pinzuti is an avid cyclist, bicycle activist, and one of the organizers of the recent Chic Women's Bicycle Tour, a "women's activity organized by women for women" that took women cyclists to the streets in 10 cities in Turkey in late September. Having lived in Europe for a decade, studying Social Pedagogy in Germany and later working in Italy, cycling became Pinzuti's preferred means of transportation.

All was not well when she returned to her hometown, ?zmir in Turkey. "When I came back to Turkey, I saw that there was no respect for cyclists, that the municipality was doing next to nothing for pedestrians and cyclists. There were no proper pavements, yet alone bicycle lanes," Pinzuti told the Hürriyet Daily News. That's when she started a blog on cycling, transportation with bicycles, and the cycling lifestyle. "I began coming together with bicycle activists through social media, and joining meetings organized by the municipality to relay our demands as cyclists."

How does a bicycle activist become an agent of change for cyclists? Or more specifically, what does Pinzuti do for cyclists across Turkey? "I write to columnists to write about bicycle transportation in their columns, I tweet to bureaucrats responsible...