The action on “Fostering women’s access to justice in Turkey”, implemented under the European Union and Council of Europe’s joint “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022”, aims to strengthen women’s access to justice in Turkey in line with international and European standards. The action is contributing to enhancing accessibility and quality of legal aid services for women and supporting key stakeholders, including civil society, to facilitate women’s access to justice in Turkey.

The action will contribute to following specific objectives:

• Improving the gender responsiveness of legal aid services to effectively respond to the needs of women.
• Enhancing legal aid access for women, including through working with legal aid lawyers and civil society.
• Increasing legal literacy and awareness among women, especially groups of women in vulnerable situation.

• Knowledge generated among key stakeholders on barriers for women's access to justice and legal aid services in Turkey and on how to remove them.
• Enhanced quality and gender responsiveness of legal aid services through capacity building of legal aid professionals.
• Provision of legal aid and assistance to women in selected communities, including those from vulnerable or disadvantaged groups, by lawyers trained on gender-sensitive and victim-centred approaches.
• Increased awareness and knowledge among women on their legal rights, how to exercise them and on available legal remedies and services, including legal aid and support services.
• Increased awareness and understanding among key stakeholders, including judicial and statistical authorities, on measuring women's access to justice and legal aid.

To achieve the expected results the action foresees the following activities:

• A research/study on the reality of barriers of women’s access to justice and legal aid in Turkey with recommendations and ways forward
• Providing legal aid to women, particularly to those from disadvantaged groups, by trained lawyers, in selected provinces
• Capacity building programmes for legal aid lawyers and law students, on women’s access to justice, including training of trainers and online tutored training through Council of Europe HELP Programme (Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals).
• Guidelines/checklist for lawyers providing legal aid for women.
• Seminar and publication on measuring women’s access to justice and legal aid through a seminar sharing European standards and promising practices
• Targeted outreach and awareness raising workshops, seminars, materials, publications, and translations.

The Action is implemented by:

• The Capacity Building and Co-operation Projects Unit at the Council of Europe’s Gender Equality Division:

Marta BECERRA, Head of Unit

Senem Gurol, Project Manager

• together with the Council of Europe Office in Ankara