The Union banned the PKK in 1993, but Union politicians Serap Güler (2nd from right) and Dorothee Bär (right) still uphold the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” of the Kurdish freedom movement.
Photo: dpa | Kay Nietfeld
As a rule, CDU women are not conspicuous for their radical feminism and do not even agree within their own party as to whether a women’s quota is an adequate instrument to compensate for the dizzyingly high proportion of men in the Union. It may have confused some people when the CDU/CSU leaders Dorothee Bär, Julia Klöckner, Serap Güler and Nina Warken took to the streets in Berlin on Wednesday (September 28) for women’s rights and in solidarity with the people of Iran. After the violent death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the vice police on September 16 and died presumably as a result of police violence, protests are simmering in Iran and now also worldwide.
The signs of the four members of the Bundestag read: »Women, life, freedom – solidarity with women in Iran. CDU/CSU«. What is irritating is that “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” is actually a slogan of the Kurdish freedom movement. And the PKK was banned in Germany in 1993 by the Christian Democratic Minister of the Interior, Manfred Kanther, of all people. A certain contradiction, since the Union describes, criminalizes and stigmatizes the Kurdish PKK as a “terrorist organization”. But their slogan seems good enough to be used by women on the centre-right of the political spectrum.
After all, the Christian Democratic commitment to the people of Iran does not end here: 19 women from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group wrote an open letter to Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. In it, they called on Baerbock not only to run feminist discussion groups in the State Department, but to follow their words with deeds. They rightly criticized Baerbock’s reaction to Amini’s death, which was four days too late, and the planned cuts in financial resources for the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation, which were to be used explicitly for gender equality. But with sentences like “In many countries around the world, violence by men is still part of the cruel everyday life of countless women”, it should not be forgotten that sexualized violence is also committed by German men against women on a daily basis.
However, the question remains as to what is really behind the commitment to the Iranian women’s movement. If one understands the fighting in Iran as a problem that affects and concerns us all, this will be difficult to reconcile with the political line of the Union. It would be interesting to see how the politicians of the Union stand for the self-determination of Muslim women in Germany, just as they demand for those in Iran. Does that also apply to the Muslim women in Germany who want to wear the hijab, niqab, chador and burqa? Can the women of the Union manage the intellectual balancing act of being against compulsory headscarves and at the same time against the headscarf ban? How would the Union deal politically with asylum seekers from Iran? So far there has been no freeze on deportation for Iranian people seeking protection and the Iranian headscarf requirement is usually not recognized as a reason for asylum in Germany. Does Christian Democratic feminism literally only go as far as the notorious EU external borders?
In addition, the headscarf is often politicized as a religious symbol, with some anti-Muslim feminists using it to justify their Islamophobia. Especially in foreign policy there is the phenomenon that women’s rights always become interesting when other interests can be linked to them. One remembers George W. Bush’s “war on terror” in 2001 and the invasion of Afghanistan, which he justified in part with women’s rights: It is not just about fighting terrorism, but especially about the rights of Afghan women. Suddenly, women’s rights came into American awareness and were exploited by politicians and the media.
The future political commitment and further political solutions by Bär, Klöckner, Güler and Warken will show how far their solidarity for the Iranian women’s movement really goes. If your concerns and solidarity with the feminist movement in Iran are sincere and serious, then that is commendable. However, in view of the Union’s political stance to date, it is advisable to remain skeptical on this issue.
