Dilan Karamanoğlu /JINHA

ISTANBUL – Serpil Kemalbay, running for Turkey's Parliament in Istanbul, says she will be taking her woman's movement approach to organizing to the Parliament. "We're coming to bring down the sexist division of labor," pledged Sermil, who has her background in the domestic workers' organizing struggle in Turkey.

The HDP is the rising opposition party hoping to challenge AKP hegemony in Turkey with their campaign for Turkey's Parliament, in which they are hoping to defeat Turkey's 10% election threshold. Serpil, a longtime domestic workers' organizer, hopes to bring that struggle into the Parliament as a HDP candidate from Istanbul.

Serpil began working in the 1990s in the people's assemblies of Istanbul's working class neighborhoods, which she called "a real autonomous organization of the people." She took part in forming solidarity houses in the neighborhoods. In the 2000s, when she realized how many people coming to the solidarity houses were women, she began working in the struggle of women's workers. Many domestic workers in Turkey are migrant workers, meaning they face even harsher working conditions and less guarantees.

Although Turkey's June election will be the first time she's on the Parliamentary ballot, Serpil is no stranger to Parliament. She says she traveled to Ankara before in connection with her work in the domestic workers' struggle. She noted that when she has met with politicians in Ankara, "domestic labor has always been something people don't hear.

"There needs to be an end to the roadblocks in the way of women domestic workers' organizing and unionizing," she said. "Women need to add to these decision processes."

(gc/mg/cm)