While Support to Rights aims to reach rights-based organisations across Turkey, it prioritises the Eastern and South-Eastern regions, where civic space has shrunk the most and resources reach the least. In this geography, where security policies and economic exclusion intersect, rights-based organisations struggle to survive under conditions far harsher than those in other regions. For this reason, the programme aims for at least 35% of supported organisations to be selected from these regions, and for organisations based in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir to together account for no more than 45%.
The association carries out support, advocacy, and awareness-raising work with a queer feminist approach, aiming to make sexual violence visible and open to discussion, and to combat it.
Working from the approach that “Sexual violence can occur wherever there is hierarchy. Anyone can be a perpetrator or a victim of sexual violence. Sexual violence is learned, which means it can also be prevented! Change in the fight against sexual violence starts with me,” its work is disseminated through the organisation’s website and social media, as well as through tools such as the Visual Archive and the “Switch It” (Öyle Değil Böyle) rights-based media language project.
Individuals who have been subjected to any form of sexual violence, their relatives, and others in need may apply to the association to request referral and legal counselling support.
Collaboration and consultancy can be requested for producing rights-based news and visual content on sexual violence, sexual abuse, dating violence, and sexual violence in the media/social media, as well as for producing awareness-raising workshops and events on sexual abuse of animals; for requests for materials and resources; and for collaboration and consultancy in developing protective and preventive work. Collaboration and consultancy can also be requested in areas such as gender, gender-based violence, sexual health, children’s bodily rights, and youth work.
Partnership and collaboration can be requested for rights-based advocacy and for national and/or international network-building work on the above topics. Any form of communication and collaboration can be requested — with municipalities and public institutions in particular, as well as with individuals and organisations providing support services to survivors of sexual violence — on awareness-raising work, protective and preventive work, and support services under the heading of sexual violence.
Contact
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cinselsiddetlemucadele
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cinselsiddetlemucadeledernegi/
Twitter (X) https://twitter.com/cs_mucadele
Website https://cinselsiddetlemucadele.org/category/blog/
Founded in 1989, the association aims to build solidarity and unity among all academic staff currently or previously working at higher education institutions, to defend their rights and interests, to encourage scientific and artistic work, and to work towards establishing the democratic environment necessary for higher education to develop freely.
As part of the broader struggle in Turkey for the rights and freedoms of all components of the university (academic staff, other employees, and students) and for the achievement of gender equality within the university, the organisation is also an active component of the struggle against all violations of rights and freedoms in the building of a democratic society.
Any academic staff currently or previously working at higher education institutions, and any students, may apply to the association in the event of a violation of their rights and academic freedoms.
The organisation is open to collaboration in organising any kind of research, conference, workshop, or forum in the field of university education and instruction; in voicing, criticising, and protesting problems experienced in these areas; and in the struggle for academic staff’s rights and academic freedoms.
Contact
Founded in 2017 by the collective that published magazines such as Express in 1994, Roll in 1997, and Bir+Bir in 2010, the Bir+Bir Culture and Art Association’s main areas of activity are digital publishing and the rights-based journalism carried out on the 1+1 Forum website. Much like the 1+1 Express magazine, which is still published quarterly, 1+1 Forum also works to monitor, publicise, and document a wide-ranging spectrum of social rights struggles and examples of solidarity.
Email
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter (X)
Within the scope of the right to a healthy environment and the right to food, Buğday Association works to build ecological awareness and sensitivity both in individuals and in society as a whole; to offer solutions to the problems arising from the irreversible and rapid degradation of ecological balances; and to support a life in harmony with nature. It is open to collaborating with other civil society organisations in areas such as training and consultancy on ecological living, safe and genuine food, the food chain, toxin-free agriculture, and rural tourism.
Email
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter (X)
YouTube
The association continues its work to raise awareness among women and children on economic, legal, and political solidarity and mutual aid, and on issues such as education, health, and family planning.
It continues its work with the aim of elevating women’s standing and status across every platform, enabling their participation in and decision-making within urban governance, developing awareness at the level of society, family, and the individual, and helping women recognise their own rights and human rights in general.
In addition to this work, the association also carries out efforts to defend the human rights of asylum seekers, migrants, and refugees.
Contact
Mekanda Adalet Derneği (MAD) carries out transdisciplinary work on developing more just, ecological, and democratic processes/practices in urban and rural space. It produces, accumulates, and shares innovative, high-quality, and public knowledge.
Individuals, groups, and local/national/international institutions wishing to build spatial production practices through participatory methods; actors seeking to have spaces of hope and stories of hope heard and disseminated; and activists, researchers, and students whose work intersects with the framework of spatial and social justice, may apply to MAD for collaboration and experience-sharing.
Individuals affected by non-participatory urban transformation processes that create rights violations; those harmed by large-scale infrastructure, mining, and energy projects in urban and rural areas; and those exposed to the negative effects of the construction/excavation economy and the lack of oversight and irregularities within it, may in particular request the association’s support on visibility and advocacy.
Contact
The Civil Society in the Penal System Association (CİSST) works to bring prison conditions in Turkey into line with international human rights standards, and to protect the rights and freedoms of prisoners so that these rights and freedoms are consistent with human dignity and universal values.
CİSST’s approach to prisoners’ rights is grounded in binding and non-binding international standards, declarations, conventions, and treaties — foremost among them the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the European Prison Rules, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners, and the United Nations Convention against Torture.
Caferağa Mah. Sakız Gülü Sk. Kazdal Apt. No:28 D:8 Kat.4
Pk: 34710 Kadıköy/ Istanbul / Turkey
Association Line: +90 216 450 50 05
Fax: +90 216 519 45 05
Prisoner Advice Line: +90 216 450 50 04
Contact
Email info@cisst.org.tr
Facebook https://m.facebook.com/cisst.org.tr/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cisstdernegi/
Twitter (X) https://twitter.com/cisstdernegi
Website
Using the soft power it draws from consumers, the Clean Clothes Campaign Association produces solutions by carrying out advocacy activities against rights violations, so that all textile workers can work under fair, healthy, and safe conditions.
The Clean Clothes Campaign association was founded in Istanbul in 2017. It is open to communicating with other civil society organisations on business and human rights, living wage, freedom of association, child labour, environmental and climate justice, informal employment, and gender equality, and to sharing experience on campaigning, lobbying, and international networks.
In addition, people who have contracted an occupational illness or wish to seek advice on this issue, or textile workers who have not received their wages or compensation at their workplace or who work under poor conditions, can apply to the association for support.
Contact
The Democracy, Peace and Alternative Politics Research Association (DEMOS) produces semi-academic knowledge that offers an alternative to the mainstream, across various fields of social science, on topics such as peace, transitional justice, memory, identity, and the Middle East — first and foremost on peace, a right belonging to everyone — through a grassroots, subject-centred gender perspective.
Founded in 2015, the association is open to sharing experience with other civil society organisations on conducting research in conflict/post-conflict settings and on podcast production. Its podcast programmes can also be accessed at https://anchor.fm/demostansesler.
Contact
Our association is a civil society organisation that carries out rights-based work. Its main aim is to support individuals with autism and their families in leading a life befitting human dignity and rights. To this end, the Denizli Autism Association (DOD) works towards the integration of autistic individuals and their families into society, and also aims to bring together, under its umbrella, those who wish to live free of discrimination and those interested in addressing social injustices.
Alongside individuals with autism and their families, the association also provides support to educators and prospective educators working in the field of autism, and is open to collaboration and experience-sharing with other civil society organisations in the areas of autism, disability rights, children’s rights, rights-based journalism, and disability rights journalism.
Contact
Founded in 2010 with the aim of increasing the role of civil society organisations in advancing fundamental rights and freedoms and in resolving the Kurdish issue, DİTAM advocates for the advancement and protection of fundamental rights and freedoms in all areas of life.
Working on the resolution of the Kurdish issue, DİTAM is open to collaboration on the peace process through institutional or individual membership in the “Social Peace Network,” coordinated overall by DİTAM.
Contact
Founded in 1996, DKVD is known for its work protecting Diyarbakır’s tangible and intangible cultural and natural heritage, documenting collective memory, and carrying out training and social activities to raise awareness on these issues.
Culture and nature are fundamental elements for the continuation of life: while culture sustains us spiritually, nature is the main element of our physical existence. Regarding the protection of cultural and natural heritage as a rights-based approach and carrying out its work accordingly, DKVD is open to collaboration or experience-sharing on the protection and development of cultural heritage and on archiving.
Contact
Founded on 8 March 2010 in Diyarbakır, DİSA aims to publish research and bring it to the attention of relevant stakeholders, and to contribute to knowledge-sharing through conferences, symposiums, panels, workshops, and reports, with the goal of increasing egalitarian social awareness and developing dialogue that enables differences to coexist peacefully.
DİSA also aims to serve as a hub for researchers, contributing first-hand, objective, field-based knowledge to the shaping of future policies through research that paves the way for society’s social and political development. The right to mother tongue, justice and peace, sustainable living and the right to space, and gender equality are areas of particular interest to DİSA, in which it seeks to produce knowledge. To date, DİSA has published numerous reports in these areas in Turkish, Kurdish, and English.
Contact
Eksi 25 Association is a civil society organisation that aims to ensure, in the best interests of every individual up to the age of 25 — regardless of any distinguishing characteristic such as language, religion, race, sex, or age — their survival, development, and participation, and their protection from neglect, abuse, and all forms of violence.
In line with its principles, values, and statutes, the association carries out work both in Turkey and abroad in areas such as children’s and youth rights, rights violations, and the prevention of all forms of violence.
In this context, its work is organised under the following programmes: the Child Neglect and Abuse Prevention Programme, the Children’s Rights Programme, the Situation Assessment Programme, the Case Monitoring Programme, the Awareness-Raising Programme, the Youth Programme, and the Programme Centred on Nature and the Climate Crisis.
Founded in Eskişehir in 2015, Eksi 25 Association operates across four centres in two provinces, Eskişehir and Kütahya. Eksi 25’s central office continues its activities as the Eksi 25 Children’s Village in Karacaşehir / Üniversite Evleri, Kütahya, “Bir Arada” Children’s Village. Eksi 25 Association provides services in legal counselling, psychological counselling, and psychosocial support. The association’s experts have developed four different modules of content aimed at families, children, teachers, and lawyers.
Contact
Founded in 2015 by Dicle Association for the Visually Impaired, GAP Association for the Physically Disabled, SSPE Solidarity Association, Silvan Association for the Disabled, and Van Association for a Barrier-Free Life, the Federation is a rights-based civil society organisation established to embed a democratic civil society understanding, to strengthen and develop civil society activities, to ensure coordinated service delivery among its member associations working in this field, and to empower and foster collaborative work among individuals, groups, institutions, and organisations working in the disability field.
Based in Diyarbakır, the Federation currently carries out its activities through thirteen member associations working in Diyarbakır, Batman, Erzurum, Şanlıurfa, Şırnak, and Antalya.
The Federation is also a member of the Confederation of the Disabled and the Network for the Rights of Children with Disabilities.
Established in 2020, the Legal Counselling Unit on Disability Rights is open to applications from those who have experienced grievances in this area seeking support.
The Federation is open to collaboration and experience-sharing with CSOs wishing to draw attention to the multiple forms of discrimination faced by women, children, young people, elderly people, and impoverished people with disabilities, and to carry out joint rights-based work in this direction, with a view to building a pluralistic civil society dialogue.
Contact
Since 2003, İHGD has worked for the implementation, advancement, and improvement of human rights and for the prevention of human rights violations, in line with international and supranational human rights conventions, instruments, and values, principles of international humanitarian law, and democratic values.
Contact
Founded in 1986, the Human Rights Association is distinguished by its work documenting and reporting rights violations; struggling for a democratic and peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue, one of the core problems underlying Turkey’s human rights and democracy troubles; working towards Turkey’s confrontation with its past; carrying out actions and events to make violations visible and raise awareness; supporting victims in their pursuit of justice; combating impunity; promoting the concept of human rights; working to build a culture and awareness of rights; and delivering human rights training. It is the most far-reaching and widespread human rights organisation working in the field of rights and freedoms in Turkey.
It is a member of the Human Rights Joint Platform (İHOP), the Refugee Rights Coordination, the International Criminal Court Turkey Coalition (UCMK) in Turkey, and, internationally, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) network.
It engages in collaboration and experience-sharing with civil society organisations around its statutory principles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the rights and freedoms set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) — whose full title is the “Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms,” drafted by the Council of Europe — and its additional protocols.
Contact
The association’s best-known core area of work is carrying out effective advocacy activities aimed at preventing and/or eliminating human rights violations occurring in social life. As part of its advocacy work, it aims to raise public awareness and sensitivity around human rights violations through various campaigns and events. Providing legal counselling and support, where needed, to victims who have suffered rights violations is also among the association’s core activities.
The association’s Head Office was founded in 1986, and its Diyarbakır Branch began its activities in March 1988. Aside from short-term closure orders issued against it due to state-of-emergency measures, it has continued its activities uninterrupted to this day.
Citizens who have suffered any form of human rights violation in social life may apply for support.
Contact
The Van Branch of the Human Rights Association, active since 1986, was founded on 13.10.1999. Working against all forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, language, religion and sect, religious belief and conviction, colour, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, political and philosophical opinion, disability, and similar grounds, the association combats hate speech and hate crimes.
It opposes the death penalty under all circumstances and everywhere in the world. It opposes torture everywhere and under all circumstances, regardless of who it is inflicted upon. It defends the right to a fair trial and to defence, for everyone, everywhere, and under all circumstances. It is opposed to war and militarism at all times and under all circumstances, and defends the right to peace. It defends freedom of expression unconditionally and without limit. It defends the freedom of organisation. It defends the right to resist oppression and tyranny. It defends everyone’s right to education and instruction in their mother tongue, as well as the right to give and receive public services in one’s mother tongue.
Essentially, anyone who has suffered any violation of the rights that bind humanity may apply for support.
Grounded in human rights, the association is open to all forms of collaboration and experience-sharing with other civil society organisations on issues frequently encountered in our region, within the context of all forms of violence against women, rights violations occurring at the border, children’s rights, and refugee rights.
Contact
With the aim of transforming media language and the media landscape in Turkey and making information/content independent of capital and the state, the Foundation is institutionalised around a trilingual (Turkish, Kurdish, English) media outlet (bianet), grounded in the principles of public benefit, a rights-based focus, and the right to access information in one’s mother tongue in the reproduction and dissemination of knowledge. It builds its news coverage around the rights and struggles of those who are “othered” on the basis of gender identity — women, children, and gender identities — sexual orientation, and ethnic, racial, religious/sectarian, and cultural identity. It monitors violations of all rights — foremost among them freedom of expression, women’s rights, LGBTI+ rights, and children’s rights — as well as policies, legal regulations, and practices that restrict rights or seek to expand existing restrictions; and it carries out editorial production and capacity-development work aimed at practising and disseminating a form of journalism that informs the public through news coverage, builds archives, and produces reports.
Contact
An independent and impartial civil society organisation, the Ismail Beşikçi Foundation (İBV) is grounded in freedom of thought and expression. It upholds respect for rights and freedoms, embraces democratic values, and adopts the principle that all forms of thought must be able to coexist. The bulk of the Foundation’s work consists of scholarly research in Kurdology. Our Foundation has been operating from its Istanbul headquarters since 2011, and our Diyarbakır representative office was established in 2014. Both our Istanbul headquarters and our Diyarbakır representative office remain actively engaged in their work.
Contact
Since its founding in 2011, Kırkayak Kültür has worked to develop a culture of coexistence and cultural pluralism by creating voluntary spaces of contact where socio-economically diverse segments of society come together, pursuing its work in rights areas such as the right to non-discrimination, refugee rights, minority rights, the right to participate in cultural and artistic life, and gender equality.
In carrying out this work, the organisation is guided by its core values — leaving no one behind, particularly disadvantaged and vulnerable segments of society and newcomers (refugees and migrants) — and by the principles of gender equality, voluntarism, and rights-based work.
Kırkayak Kültür operates in Gaziantep from two separate centres — an Art Centre and a Migration and Cultural Studies Centre — carrying out its work on social cohesion and access to rights under six programmes: Culture-Art, Migration, Urban Studies, the Mutfak || Matbakh Workshop (Gender Equality), Media for Coexistence, and Dom Studies, all with an approach that promotes cultural pluralism.
As a Turkey-based civil society organisation working on a rights-based axis since its founding, Kırkayak Kültür carries out its work on migrant/refugee rights, cultural exchange, and combating discrimination and hate speech — particularly concerning Dom communities living in the Middle East and other related groups — together with civil society organisations and networks in Middle Eastern countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, as well as in many European Union member states.
Kırkayak Art Centre:
The Culture-Art Programme carries out joint work with artists and organises events to bring their works to all segments of society, and runs activities that bring together local artists with artists and art lovers on national and international platforms. In this context, it works to hold film festivals, film screenings, photography and painting exhibitions, theatre performances, and other cultural and artistic activities, striving to offer artists an “open space.”
The Media for Coexistence Programme has begun work to create an open media space that makes use of new media tools and gives a platform to journalists, feminist activists, environmental activists, and young academics and artists working on migration and refugee issues — carrying out rights-based work through culture and art, particularly for disadvantaged and marginalised segments of society, with a focus on culture, art, and refugee rights in the city.
Migration and Cultural Studies Centre:
The Migration Studies Programme carries out its migration and refugee work around the axis of “coexistence,” seeking to ground it in philosophical foundations such as unconditional hospitality, cosmopolitanism, and the rights of others.
The Dom Studies Programme: since its founding, Kırkayak Kültür has carried out rights-based work on the rights of Dom communities and other related groups living in the Middle East. It carries out rights-based work on the core problems of Dom communities — excluded and marginalised across different Middle Eastern countries for reasons of ethnicity, culture, and lifestyle — as well as other related communities (Abdal, Roma, Lom).
The Mutfak//Matbakh Programme brings together migrant and local middle-class women in the city, offering open spaces where they produce and hold activities across different fields and topics. While this programme works towards gender equality on the one hand, it also, guided by the principle of gender equality, creates experiences of coexistence for all segments of society.
The Urban Studies Programme: as a Gaziantep-based civil society organisation, this programme was founded with the aim of championing the city’s urban culture, cultural and artistic spaces, gastronomy, and cultural heritage — particularly its socio-economic cultural diversity — recording the city’s collective memory, and contributing to the city’s process of transformation. It continues its work in support of the social cohesion of newcomers to the city through migration, within the framework of a coexistence-based institution of belonging, and to produce and contribute solutions, as a civil society organisation, to the problems the city faces.
Contact
Having begun its activities in 2016 and formalised as an association in 2017, KODA is a Kocaeli-based initiative with an academic orientation, striving for peace and democracy. It carries out a struggle for responsible intellectualism and academic integrity.
Open to collaboration with other civil society organisations within the framework of the struggle for freedom of expression and academic freedoms, KODA does not have a mechanism for individual applications, but notes that its solidarity network is open to everyone.
Contact
Providing legal aid against sexual violence towards women since 1997, the association’s other activities can be summarised as issuing press statements, visiting prisons, following legal proceedings, filing criminal complaints, and organising awareness-raising meetings and panels.
The association argues that official violence against women is political in nature and develops within a systematic structure made up of law enforcement, the prosecution, the judiciary, and the Forensic Medicine Institute, the “official expert body.”
The organisation is open to applications from women who have been subjected to state-perpetrated violence during detention, street protests, or home raids, seeking support. Its website is currently under construction. Those wishing to get in touch can reach the association at hukukiyardimburosu@gmail.com.
Contact
Since 15.03.2015, the association has monitored violations and inequalities among local and refugee women’s and children’s groups, carrying out work at the community and state level aimed at correcting discriminatory practices, preventing violations, and providing protection. It is open to experience-sharing with other civil society organisations in the fields of women’s, children’s, and youth issues.
Contact
MOKİD’s Vision: To create a world/society in which all forms of violence and discrimination against women have ended, and in which justice, equality, and freedom are established for everyone.
MOKİD’s Mission: To combat all forms of violence rooted in gender inequality through a rights-based perspective; and, in this context, to carry out advocacy, campaigning, research, training, and lobbying work aimed at empowering women and girls and ensuring they have access to equal opportunities.
MOKİD was founded in 2007 as a non-profit association. Since its founding, as part of its work to empower women, it has delivered awareness training to women, men, and young people on gender equality and violence against women. MOKİD carries out its work combating all forms of violence through a rights-based perspective, and, in this context, engages in advocacy, campaigning, research, training, and lobbying activities aimed at empowering women and girls and ensuring their access to equal opportunities.
Social, psychological, and legal counselling, literacy courses, vocational skills courses, and social cohesion activities are provided for women who have experienced violence. MOKİD provides its social and psychological counselling services in Arabic and Turkish, and its legal counselling services in Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish. By offering services in the languages needed by the local population, MOKİD enables women who speak different languages to receive services in their mother tongue, making it easier for them to access the services of public institutions/organisations and to learn about their rights.
In addition, since 2015, MOKİD has been contributing, at the local level, to work aimed at refugee women in partnership with international humanitarian aid organisations. Because MOKİD provides services in the languages refugees need, refugee women and children are able to express themselves comfortably in their mother tongue and find solutions to their problems.
Contact
Working in the areas of the right to information, freedom of expression, and press freedom, MLSA provides legal support to individuals prosecuted for their professional activities — journalists foremost among them.
The association was founded to support LGBT citizens in embracing liberatory values, realising their existence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, developing themselves, and being able to contribute — through their individual, social, and cultural lives and conduct — to the development of social peace, harmony, and wellbeing.
The main aim of Mersin 7 Renk LGBT Association is to raise awareness across society regarding LGBTI+ individuals, who face discrimination and stigmatisation in many areas of life. To achieve this aim, the association carries out a variety of activities both in Mersin and in other provinces. Foremost among these activities are the reporting of rights violations against LGBTI+ people at the local and regional level, case monitoring, scientific research, training, workshops, routine meetings with LGBTI+ individuals, and workshops, symposiums, and conferences attended by people from various disciplines.
Contact
Since its establishment in 2013, the Foundation has advocated for the equal exercise of freedoms and rights, and carries out mother-tongue work in the context of fundamental rights and freedoms.
Work supporting dialogue, mutual understanding, and coexistence, and the Foundation’s long-term goal of establishing a multilingual university, will serve the purpose of supporting the coexistence of different identities through mutual understanding.
This includes work aimed at enabling Kurds, as an ethnic group, to receive services in their mother tongue, in order to address the inequalities they face in social life.
Creative work in fields such as culture, art, education, media, science, and technology that supports diversity, equality, and pluralism: language standardisation to facilitate the use of the Kurdish mother tongue, compiling manuscripts and oral literary works, and archiving and documentation work related to language, history, and ethnography.
Contact
Known for short as MED-DER, since its founding in 2017 the association has served as a bridge for the coexistence of different languages, cultures, beliefs, and identities in the region. Beyond these areas of activity, the association also carries out work based on women’s, children’s, and human rights, and, based in Diyarbakır, works in close relationship with institutions and networks established in the region for women’s and children’s rights.
With this perspective, the association organises language and education workshops, translation workshops, prepares materials for these workshops, and holds workshops and seminars; it organises panels and symposiums for education in the mother tongue, provides multilingual announcement services at book fairs, and holds panels on language, culture, and education in the mother tongue.
It also provides translation services to organisations that request them, compiles works of oral and written Kurdish literature, and carries out joint work with various institutions in organising events.
Contact
The Migration and Humanitarian Aid Foundation was founded on 16.07.1999 in Mersin. Since 2010, it has continued its activities in the field of children’s rights from its centre in Diyarbakır. Based on its founding and working perspective, the Foundation’s three core areas of work are children’s rights, women’s rights, and ecology. The Foundation carries out rights-based work mainly in the field of children’s rights, providing educational scholarship support for children unable to access equal educational opportunities, and running workshops on children’s rights, research-and-implementation projects, rights-based monitoring and reporting, and economic and legal support activities aimed at empowering children and their parents/caregivers.
The Migration and Humanitarian Aid Foundation works with children who have migrated or been forced to migrate for various reasons and who are in disadvantaged situations. The Foundation’s core approach in working with children is to see them as individuals with their own distinct existence, and to encourage the child’s freedom, independence, and creativity. The Foundation also supports children’s development through artistic, cultural, social, and sporting activities carried out with a rights-based approach, and all of its work is conducted multilingually.
Contact
The Migration Monitoring Association (Göç-İz) was founded in Istanbul in 2016 with the aim of developing effective social solidarity among people affected by migration in general, and forced migration in particular, and of amplifying displaced people’s demands for a dignified life.
To this end, the association aims to support internally displaced persons in their pursuit of justice, to make visible in the public eye the fundamental rights violations caused by forced displacement practices, to raise awareness of the social, economic, and psychological problems experienced by citizens during the process of resettlement, and to contribute to the recognition and redress of the grievances of people who have suffered serious human rights violations. In this context, its main focus is to support access to fundamental rights and to develop social solidarity for people forcibly displaced between 1984 and 2016.
Contact
As Nirengi Association, we embrace the rights-based approach that defines individuals as “rights-holders” and the state and certain non-state actors as “duty-bearers” responsible for securing these rights. Accordingly, as Nirengi Association, we position ourselves as a CSO that places rights-holders at the centre of our field of work. In line with this, our core approach is to hold duty-bearing institutions and organisations — the state foremost among them, but including ourselves — accountable for fulfilling their obligations and to support them in taking action, while also supporting rights-holders in becoming empowered to claim their rights.
Among our most prominent activities is our Support Line Against Abuse programme, through which we provide free legal counselling and psychosocial support to children who have been subjected to violence or abuse, and to their caregivers. Calls to the support line, reachable at 0850 216 53 67, are answered in line with the caller’s profile and are connected with legal counselling and/or psychosocial support according to their needs. All forms of physical, sexual, emotional, and economic abuse and violence fall within the scope of this line. Support under the Support Line Against Abuse programme is provided online across Turkey.
Contact
Founded in 2015, the Nonviolence Center carries out rights-based work by strengthening the capacities of civil society organisations engaged in rights-based work. It conducts trainings, resource production (books, booklets, articles), and research on topics such as nonviolence, nonviolent organising, approaches to conflict, consensus, and power analysis.
Collaborating with civil society organisations on many issues such as nonviolence, nonviolent communication, conflict resolution, decision-making among equals, group dynamics, and nonviolent organising practices, the Nonviolence Center is always open to requests for support and applications in this area.
Contact
Founded in 2010, Ordu Women’s Empowerment Association is a rights-based civil society organisation working in the province of Ordu and the Black Sea region with the aim of preventing violence against women and strengthening the active participation of women and girls in social life.
Open to collaboration and experience-sharing on issues such as combating violence against women, child abuse, child labour, seasonal agricultural migration, gender, combating discrimination, and monitoring public and municipal budgets and activities, the association also provides support to groups subjected to violence against women, child abuse, and discrimination.
Contact
Turkey’s first trans association, Pink Life LGBTİ+ Solidarity Association is a trans self-organisation founded in Ankara on 30 June 2006. Producing projects and providing direct support services on discrimination, hate crimes, violence, and social exclusion faced by LGBTİ+ people — trans people in particular — Pink Life LGBTİ+ Solidarity Association continues its advocacy activities at the national and international level, carrying out work in the field of fundamental human rights grounded in the principles of non-discrimination and equality.
Open to collaboration and experience-sharing with other civil society organisations on trans rights above all, as well as on LGBTİ+ rights, the struggle for sex work and the human rights of sex workers, sexual health, family, the coming-out process, the transition process, violence and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, education, academia, working life, military service, prison, law, media, queer culture-art work, and festival organisation, the organisation notes that it is in fact open to any form of collaboration.
The association provides psychosocial, psychological, and legal support (by phone, email, and/or in person) to people who apply to Pink Life and identify themselves within the trans umbrella and/or as LGBTİ+, in areas such as family, the coming-out process, the transition process, violence and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, education, academia, working life, military service, prison, law, media, sexual health, and mental health. Additionally, through the Dilek İnce Clothing Bank operated by the association, clothing support is provided to prisoners and/or LGBTİ+ people in need, and academic resources and consultancy are provided through the Ali Aligül Arıkan Library and the association’s accumulated expertise on LGBTİ+ rights.
Contact
Kırmızı Şemsiye (Red Umbrella) is a civil society organisation that informs, mobilises, and organises sex workers in Turkey — regardless of gender identity and sexual orientation, race, colour, language, religion, or sect, and regardless of whether they work in registered or unregistered settings — around the human rights violations, social exclusion, criminalisation, and stigmatisation they face, the problems they encounter in sexual and reproductive health, and all other areas concerning sex workers; and that carries out advocacy and lobbying work with the public and with authorities in line with sex workers’ needs and demands.
The Legal Emergency Line for sex workers offers 24/7 support at 0534 010 95 98. The association’s support services also include the Sexual and Reproductive Health Counselling Line for Sex Workers and the Body Affirmation Process Peer Counselling Line at 0545 347 57 27.
Contact
Our association is a rights-based civil society organisation founded in the final months of 2017 by a group of volunteers coming together, working in the Sur district in the centre of Diyarbakır. The reason we placed Sur at the centre of our work is the armed conflicts that took place between 2015 and 2016 and the trauma these conflicts caused. When we began our work, we founded the organisation with the aim of reducing the long-term effects of this trauma by focusing on children and carrying out predominantly psychosocial support work. The focus of our work is children aged 4–18 affected by the conflicts that took place in the Sur district of Diyarbakır.
Our areas of activity:
Early Childhood Education Play Rooms (ages 4–6).
Libraries: Tahir Elçi Toy Library, Book Library, Bicycle Library.
Workshops (ages 7–14): Photography, Upcycling, Painting, Life Skills, Micro-macramé, Play, Erbane (frame drum)
Academic activities, monitoring-documentation and advocacy
Children’s Rights Academy,
Monitoring and Documentation,
Advocacy (Right to Play, Child Labour)
Contact
Founded in Diyarbakır in late 2018, the association continues its work to combat all forms of social, political, social, cultural, economic, sexual, and psychological violence against women; to carry out work aimed at eliminating all forms of discrimination against women; to develop and implement projects to promote gender equality; to carry out work aimed at strengthening civil society and women’s organisations; and to protect nature and natural life, and to promote and realise the building of an ecological way of life and a culture of democracy and peace.
Our rights-based areas of work include lobbying relevant institutions and organisations for the application of positive discrimination in laws and practices concerning women — particularly legal regulations that directly affect women; building civil power and advocating for the implementation of regulations that will prevent women from being victimised and/or having their rights violated through laws and practices; and carrying out work aimed at women’s rights.
Contact
Serhat Migration Research Association is a human rights association working on the rights violations faced by people who have left their country or been internally displaced.
It holds that borders are not binding, and recognises that all people who have relocated — whether by force or for any other reason, due to war, belief, sexual identity, race, and similar causes — hold inviolable, inalienable, and non-negotiable fundamental rights and freedoms to life, and economic, social, cultural, and political rights and freedoms, in the place to which they have migrated.
Open to participating in and collaborating on work relating to refugees and internally displaced persons, the organisation also provides support to individuals in these situations.
Contact
Setting out in 2011 under the rainbow with a vision of a just, equal, and free world, the Social Policies, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association (SPoD) aims to contribute to the development of the social policies necessary for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and beyond (LGBTİ+) people in Turkey to live a life in which they do not feel oppressed on account of their gender identity and sexual orientation.
Alongside its advocacy work towards this aim, SPoD seeks to develop service models for LGBTİ+ communities that can serve as examples for public institutions, to eliminate all forms of discrimination within them, and, in the long term, to deliver services tailored to LGBTİ+ people through public and private sector partnerships.
SPoD provides legal, social, and psychological counselling to LGBTİ+ people, carries out campaign case monitoring, delivers training to mental health professionals, lawyers, institutions, and municipalities, conducts academic research, organises seminars, panels, schools of politics and activism, and election campaigns, forms support groups, and holds advocacy meetings.
SPoD carries out this work through its professional staff, volunteers, and expert networks.
Contact
The Solidarity Association with Refugees was founded in Izmir on 31 January 2008 to protect and defend the rights of unaccompanied asylum seekers, migrants, or refugees in Turkey.
Contact
Since 2010, Sulukule Volunteers Association has worked in the Karagümrük district of Istanbul with at-risk, disadvantaged, discriminated-against, and financially struggling groups, using rights-based activities to improve these groups’ quality of life in their daily lives and to increase their participation in society.
Through rights-based workshops, SGD aims to strengthen children socially and psychologically, to create child-friendly spaces through participatory methods that support creativity, to develop holistic models to prevent school dropout, to disseminate these models, and to reduce the school dropout rate.
Contact
Working against gender inequality and all forms of violence against women in line with feminist principles, the foundation has, since 1991, pursued its work with the aim of strengthening solidarity among women.
Open to collaboration and experience-sharing, in line with feminist principles, with other civil society actors in the fight against violence against women — through a counselling centre, volunteer workshops, training, and neighbourhood-based work — the foundation also provides support to women who have been subjected to violence or the threat of violence.
Contact
Since 2014, Zan has carried out its work with the aim of conducting scientific academic research on Turkish and Middle Eastern societies, covering all fields of social, political, and economic science and addressing any topic within these fields from an interdisciplinary perspective, and of sharing the knowledge gained through this research with the public.
People living in Diyarbakır who are unable to access their right to education may apply to the organisation for support.
Contact
Founded in Istanbul in 2001 around the idea of “a magazine that thinks about cinema,” Altyazı Sinema Dergisi (Altyazı Cinema Magazine) is Turkey’s longest-running independent cinema magazine, and has for over 20 years sustained its work in the field of cinema through digital publishing, screening programmes, and seminars given by trainers from various fields of expertise. Founded in March 2019 by the magazine’s editorial board members, Altyazı Sinema Derneği (Altyazı Cinema Association) works to contribute to the development of a democratic, pluralist, and liberatory discourse in cinema specifically and in culture and the arts more broadly; to increase the visibility of independent cinema actors; and, through Altyazı Fasikül, which focuses on issues such as censorship, freedom of expression, and gender equality in the film industry, to ensure that readers have access to reliable, high-quality information and criticism.
By supporting communication and solidarity within the industry, Altyazı Sinema Derneği produces written and video content to create a space of expression for at-risk/disadvantaged film actors (independent filmmakers, distributors, cinema operators, festivals, university clubs, etc.), and reports on the rights violations they face. In addition to defending the right to give and receive information, the association takes part in various forms of solidarity with these groups’ organising processes, and provides them with a space to construct their own voice and reach a wider audience.
Contact
Founded in Diyarbakır on 1 September 2021 by a group of activists, academics, and artists with a background in rights-based work and civil society, the Association for Cultural Research for Peace (bakad) aims to deepen democracy and achieve social peace on the basis of the principles of participation and inclusiveness.
Focusing specifically on Diyarbakır, our association aims to spread a culture of peace in Turkey through scientific and artistic production-focused activities aimed at understanding the structural and cultural background of social inequalities based on race, gender, sexual orientation/gender identity, religion/belief, age, and economic status.
Contact
The association was founded in Adana in March 2018. For six years, it has worked on indicator-based monitoring, social inclusion, advocacy, and network-building on child labour, placing particular emphasis on the Convention on the Rights of the Child in its work.
By bringing the problems faced by child labourers onto the public agenda, the association carries out indicator-based monitoring and advocacy work in collaboration with civil society organisations and local administrations responsible for children’s rights. Since 2018, it has produced the Child Labour Rights Violations Report.
Under its Child Labour Combat Center Advisory Line, the association provides free access-to-justice and social service counselling to child labourers and to the parents of children at risk.
Contact
Önce Çocuklar Derneği (Children First Association) was founded in Diyarbakır in 2017, within the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with the aim of carrying out work on children’s psychosocial, cultural-artistic development and linguistic, cognitive, and physical development, and of supporting individuals and organisations working in this field. Within this scope, it has, over this period, carried out its activities within the borders of Diyarbakır province.
The association’s founding purpose is the protection of children’s fundamental rights and, in this context, the support of children. Alongside children’s right to life, right to health, and right to protection from physical, psychological, and sexual exploitation, it also focuses on mother-tongue and cultural rights. The association bases all its activities on a rights- and equality-based approach. It approaches every piece of work it carries out through the lens of children’s fundamental rights, access to these rights, equal opportunity, and rights violations. Following its work on cultural rights and mother-tongue rights, over the last two years it has also prioritised work on monitoring these rights and identifying and reporting rights violations. It carries out its activities guided by the principle that every child has the right to be educated in their own mother tongue and to learn and keep alive their own culture and cultural values.
Contact
Email
Instagram
Twitter (X)
Using the soft power it draws from consumers, the Clean Clothes Campaign Association produces solutions by carrying out advocacy activities against rights violations, so that all textile workers can work under fair, healthy, and safe conditions.
The Clean Clothes Campaign association was founded in Istanbul in 2017. It is open to communicating with other civil society organisations on business and human rights, living wage, freedom of association, child labour, environmental and climate justice, informal employment, and gender equality, and to sharing experience on campaigning, lobbying, and international networks.
In addition, people who have contracted an occupational illness or wish to seek advice on this issue, or textile workers who have not received their wages or compensation at their workplace or who work under poor conditions, can apply to the association for support.
Contact
Our association is a civil society organisation that carries out rights-based work. Its main aim is to support individuals with autism and their families in leading a life befitting human dignity and rights. To this end, the Denizli Autism Association (DOD) works towards the integration of autistic individuals and their families into society, and also aims to bring together, under its umbrella, those who wish to live free of discrimination and those interested in addressing social injustices.
Alongside individuals with autism and their families, the association also provides support to educators and prospective educators working in the field of autism, and is open to collaboration and experience-sharing with other civil society organisations in the areas of autism, disability rights, children’s rights, rights-based journalism, and disability rights journalism.
Contact
Founded in 1996, DKVD is known for its work protecting Diyarbakır’s tangible and intangible cultural and natural heritage, documenting collective memory, and carrying out training and social activities to raise awareness on these issues.
Culture and nature are fundamental elements for the continuation of life: while culture sustains us spiritually, nature is the main element of our physical existence. Regarding the protection of cultural and natural heritage as a rights-based approach and carrying out its work accordingly, DKVD is open to collaboration or experience-sharing on the protection and development of cultural heritage and on archiving.
Contact
Founded on 8 March 2010 in Diyarbakır, DİSA aims to publish research and bring it to the attention of relevant stakeholders, and to contribute to knowledge-sharing through conferences, symposiums, panels, workshops, and reports, with the goal of increasing egalitarian social awareness and developing dialogue that enables differences to coexist peacefully.
DİSA also aims to serve as a hub for researchers, contributing first-hand, objective, field-based knowledge to the shaping of future policies through research that paves the way for society’s social and political development. The right to mother tongue, justice and peace, sustainable living and the right to space, and gender equality are areas of particular interest to DİSA, in which it seeks to produce knowledge. To date, DİSA has published numerous reports in these areas in Turkish, Kurdish, and English.
Contact
Eksi 25 Association is a civil society organisation that aims to ensure, in the best interests of every individual up to the age of 25 — regardless of any distinguishing characteristic such as language, religion, race, sex, or age — their survival, development, and participation, and their protection from neglect, abuse, and all forms of violence.
In line with its principles, values, and statutes, the association carries out work both in Turkey and abroad in areas such as children’s and youth rights, rights violations, and the prevention of all forms of violence.
In this context, its work is organised under the following programmes: the Child Neglect and Abuse Prevention Programme, the Children’s Rights Programme, the Situation Assessment Programme, the Case Monitoring Programme, the Awareness-Raising Programme, the Youth Programme, and the Programme Centred on Nature and the Climate Crisis.
Founded in Eskişehir in 2015, Eksi 25 Association operates across four centres in two provinces, Eskişehir and Kütahya. Eksi 25’s central office continues its activities as the Eksi 25 Children’s Village in Karacaşehir / Üniversite Evleri, Kütahya, “Bir Arada” Children’s Village. Eksi 25 Association provides services in legal counselling, psychological counselling, and psychosocial support. The association’s experts have developed four different modules of content aimed at families, children, teachers, and lawyers.
Contact
Email
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter (X)
YouTube
–
Barrier-Free Access Association
Barrier-Free Access Association was founded in Istanbul in 2011. Our association’s core aim is to remove the barriers built around a person’s difference in ability, based on the recognition that disability is not a deficiency but part of human diversity. Our areas of work include eliminating the social and physical factors that render a person disabled, ensuring that people with disabilities have equal rights with all other members of society, ending discriminatory practices, defending the right of people with disabilities to live alongside society as equal individuals, and combating any practice or policy that could lead to isolation. We hold that an equal, accessible, and barrier-free life is a fundamental human right for everyone, and we carry out our work within this framework. We strive to bring the “rights-based” understanding of disability up to the level of equal individuals, in line with universal human rights.
Among the aims set out in our association’s statute and our working principles are combating all forms of discrimination and expanding universal design — that is, accessibility — in every area of life. In line with these aims, we work on disability rights under such headings as the right to accessibility, the right to equal participation, the right to an accessible city, and the right to combat discrimination and to equality. In particular, we produce functional solutions on universal design and accessibility, develop drafts and pilot applications of our proposed solutions, and make it a working principle to share our solutions with any institution, organisation, or individual working in the field through usable materials, reports, and events. We carry out various work to ensure that every product, service, piece of information, and technology produced is accessible, make a particular effort to make every event we hold fully accessible, and organise training, seminars, and events aimed at increasing blind people’s knowledge and skills on various topics, so as to make our audience aware of similar needs shared by others.
Collaboration and consultancy can be requested from our association on producing awareness-raising workshops and events on concepts such as “disability, ableism, universal design, accessibility, and inclusiveness.” Consultancy support can be requested on making websites and applications accessible for blind people. Partnership and collaboration can be requested for rights-based advocacy and for national or international network-building work in all the areas of struggle we have outlined. Any form of communication and collaboration can be requested — with municipalities and public institutions in particular — on the accessibility of information and physical spaces.
Contact
Gola Culture, Art and Ecology Association was founded in Istanbul in 2006, with a focus on keeping the Laz language alive, and for 10 years organised the Green Highland Culture, Art and Environment Festival in its area of work, the Eastern Black Sea region, across various thematic areas. Having moved its headquarters to Rize as of 2021, Gola continues its work in the Eastern Black Sea region to spread knowledge from the local to the national and global level, particularly in the areas of language rights and environmental rights.
Contact
HEVİ LGBTİ+ Association was founded in 2015 by a group of Minority LGBTİ+ individuals who came together.
Although our association is based in Istanbul, it also carries out workshops and activities in cities such as Eskişehir, Yalova, Van, Diyarbakır, Ankara, Izmir, and Mersin. Working in the fields of refugees, minorities, and health, our association carries out work to expand multilingual activities, to expand sexual health and safety work specifically for LGBTİ+ people, to mainstream Gender Equality, to empower Minority and Refugee LGBTİ+ people, and to monitor LGBTİ+ court cases. HEVİ LGBTİ+ Association has provided legal support to LGBTİ+ people since 2018. We have also provided peer counselling since 2015. You can reach our association’s email for counselling.
Contact
Founded in Erzincan in January 2019. Our target audience is women, children, and LGBTİ+ people, with whom we carry out workshops and field work from a gender equality and feminist perspective. We provide legal, social, and psychological support at our counselling/solidarity centre to women, children, and LGBTİ+ people who recognise that they have experienced violence. In working with our target audience, who have been subjected to violence, we provide support from a feminist perspective, in line with the principle that “the victim’s testimony is essential,” without establishing hierarchy, without taking on the role of a saviour, without judgement, and grounded in solidarity.
To reach the organisation by phone: 0446 223 25 08
Contact
Founded on 6 March 2017 in Istanbul, following the closure by statutory decree of the Istanbul Kurdish Institute, which had been founded on 18 April 1992, the Kurdish Studies Association (Komeleya Lêkolînên Kurdî) works on Kurdish-language education, the preparation of educational materials, the production and development of academic publications, and mother-tongue education and language rights.
Our association is also a body that, always placing democratic and pluralist values at the centre of its work on language rights and mother-tongue rights, organises workshops aimed at learning and developing the mother tongue; produces academic publications in fields such as history, literature, language, and culture; monitors and reports rights violations experienced in the use and teaching of the mother tongue; carries out work to eliminate these rights violations; and organises panels, seminars, and workshops on language rights, mother-tongue education, and related issues.
You can get in touch with us for help, support, or collaboration on your work related to the Kurdish language and its dialects (Kurmanji, Zazaki, Sorani, Kelhuri, Leki, Hewrami, and Lori), or on your work in the field of mother-tongue and language rights.
Contact
Providing legal aid against sexual violence towards women since 1997, the association’s other activities can be summarised as issuing press statements, visiting prisons, following legal proceedings, filing criminal complaints, and organising awareness-raising meetings and panels.
The association argues that official violence against women is political in nature and develops within a systematic structure made up of law enforcement, the prosecution, the judiciary, and the Forensic Medicine Institute, the “official expert body.”
The organisation is open to applications from women who have been subjected to state-perpetrated violence during detention, street protests, or home raids, seeking support. Its website is currently under construction. Those wishing to get in touch can reach the association at hukukiyardimburosu@gmail.com.
Contact
Founded in Istanbul in 2008 when a group of families whose children, siblings, relatives, or loved ones are LGBTİ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, and +) came together, LİSTAG formalised as an association in 2019 and has sustained its support and solidarity activities for 15 years. We envision a future in which every person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression are freely declared, valued, and respected.
To realise this vision, we:
Provide SUPPORT by informing LGBTİ+ families and their loved ones.
Provide CONSULTANCY, to our own members as well as to other civil society organisations, institutions, and companies, on the specific problems and difficulties LGBTİ+ people face.
Carry out ADVOCACY so that LGBTİ+ people can achieve full equality, so that the necessary laws and policies are created, and so that awareness is raised and attitudes are changed in our society on this issue.
To get to know us better: the documentary “Benim Çocuğum” (My Child), the podcast “Gökkuşağına Ses Ver” (Give Voice to the Rainbow)
Contact
GAR-Migration Research Association was founded in Istanbul in 2017 by academics working in the field of migration. Since then, it has carried out activities aimed at producing critical knowledge, supporting migration research and researchers, making visible the rights violations experienced by migrants and refugees through rights-based knowledge production, and contributing to evidence-based policymaking.
Its main activities in recent years include:
Contact
