“Women’s active participation in local administrations is of critical importance”

 

Addressing the International Summit on Women in Local Administrations, President Erdoğan said: “An ideal and fair social life is possible only if women have rights and influence. Women’s active participation in urban life and local administrations, just like in social life, is of critical importance.”

President and Justice and Development (AK) Party Chairman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a speech at the International Summit on Women in Local Administrations in Istanbul.

Stating that as migration from rural areas to cities increase, the need for woman-oriented urbanization policies is felt more and more each passing day, President Erdoğan noted that the burden on women’s shoulder gets increasingly heavier, and added: “An ideal and fair social life is possible only if women have rights and influence. Women’s active participation in urban life and local administrations, just like in social life, is of critical importance. That is so because, every city, every residential unit, in which people as societies live, is the home of those very people as well.”

Congratulating all the women in Türkiye on the Women’s Rights Day, President Erdoğan stressed that Türkiye has made the biggest progress regarding women’s rights during their term, and went on to say: “You can already see it when you look at the figures of the past 23 years. Women’s labor force participation rate was 27.9 per cent when we took office. It increased to 35.7 per cent as of September 2025. The number of women deputies at the Parliament was 24, and women’s representation rate was just 4.4 per cent. With the May 2023 elections, the number of the women deputies at the Parliament increased to 119, and the representation rate to 19.83 per cent, increasing five-fold.”