Seven instances of open warfare occurred in the
Caucasus in the 1980s and 1990s, and there have
been many other cases of the use of armed force
against civilians (Hansen 1998, 9). In Turkey, the
Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK, Kurdistan
Worker’s Party), a Marxist separatist movement,
waged an armed campaign against the state during
the 1980s and 1990s, and other recent conflicts
have occurred on a smaller scale. Domestic vio-
lence is also prevalent. A high percentage of women
in Turkey report being at least occasionally beaten
(Arat 2000). Conflict resolution and peacemaking
are thus as applicable to intimate, household levels
as to broader geopolitical levels, and local women
activists have responded with initiatives aimed at
curbing violence of all kinds.
Throughout the sub-region, women have tradi-
tionally played an important role in indigenous
mediation, often invoking a specific societal role
such as motherhood. According to tradition in the
Caucasus, a woman could stop a fight by throwing
her scarf between the combatants (Garb 1996, 36).
In Turkey, the women’s activist group “Saturday
Mothers” responded with a campaign to unite peo-
ple from disparate political factions, and assisted
Kurdish parents in tracing their imprisoned or “dis-
appeared” children (Anderson 1999, 232).
Women in the sub-region have also built on
efforts by their predecessors. Recent attempts to
mobilize Azeri and Armenian women for peace in
the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh have built
upon earlier movements dating back to the early
twentieth century (Tohidi 2000). Efforts at reduc-
ing domestic violence in Azerbaijan date back at
least to the 1920s (Heyat 2000).
The vocabularies and institutions of peace-
making, peace-building, peacekeeping, and conflict
management in the Caucasus and Turkey have pro-
liferated in recent years as a consequence of the
globalization of civic activism. Many recent en-
deavors at peacemaking, particularly those that
specifically involve women, have arisen from col-
laboration between local activists and international
institutions. For example, in 2001 the Center for
Global Peace at the American University in Wash-
ington, D.C. created a commission to promote peace
between Armenians and Turks and between Arme-
nians and Azeris (International Peace and Conflict
Resolution 2003). The commission’s efforts have
engaged women, including a trip by Armenian
women to Istanbul and a pilot television show
focusing on women’s issues designed to reach both
Turkish and Armenian viewers.
Local women activists have created local and
cross-state peace-promoting linkages both directly
the caucasus and turkey 545and through United Nations agencies and interna-
tional non-governmental organizations. The Trans-
caucasus Women’s Dialogue, established in 1994,
brought together women from Armenia, Azerbai-
jan, and Georgia to work on such projects as the
rehabilitation of child war victims and training in
peace- and democracy-building (Reimann 2001,
55). United Nations Security Council Resolution
1325, adopted in 2000, calls for incorporating
gender-informed perspectives into disarmament,
demobilization, and rehabilitation initiatives in
Azerbaijan and has served to sanction the efforts of
local activists. Women for Conflict Prevention and
Peace Building in the Southern Caucasus, an initia-
tive started by the United Nations Development
Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in 2001, addresses the
condition of unresolved conflict known as “no-war-
no-peace” in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. It
has engaged in a variety of peace-building activi-
ties, such as convening a meeting between women
in the Azeri Nakhichevan area; gathering women
leaders from among the estimated 1.2 million
Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in the South
Caucasus for conflict resolution and peace-building
workshops; and developing a university curriculum
on gender and conflict resolution (UNIFEM 2003).
Peace-promoting vocabularies are transmited
through various technologies, of which women
activists have recently made creative use. In the late
1990s activist women in Armenia, whose previous
strategy had mainly been oral presentation, started
using media technologies for peacemaking (McKay
and Mazurana 2001, 24). In Turkey, a shift has
been taking place in the way the Turkish-Kurdish
conflict is talked about. The ban on the public use
of the Kurdish language, including on radio and
television, has been relaxed, and acknowledgment
of Kurdish ethnic difference is now more common
in public discourse.
Women are a majority in every state in the sub-
region of Turkey and the Caucausus; more women
than men are thus affected by conflict. Moreover, in
combat zones women are often victimized by rape,
displacement, and otherwise to a greater degree
than men even though most of the combatants are
male. Efforts by women in the region at peacemak-
ing, peace-building, peacekeeping, and conflict res-
olution demonstrate that women are not content to
remain victims, and that they can play a vital role in
the struggle for peace.Bibliography
S. Anderson, Women’s many roles in reconciliation, in
European Centre for Conflict Prevention (ed.), People
building peace. 35 inspiring stories from around the
world, Utrecht 1999, 230–6.