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

11This research was conducted in the context of a project funded by TUBITAK, The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey, entitled “Gender Based Violence: Analysis of the Problem and the Struggle Against it” (no 105 K075 SOBAG), also supported by Bogazici University and Sabanci University. We would like to extend our gratitude to Nebahat Akkoç and all the KAMER women who generously shared their experiences with us. Nora Fisher Onar and Hande Paker invited us to their symposium on “Grounding Cosmopolitanism” and made most valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of the article. We are also grateful to them.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.