An interview with the Founder and the First President of W20
The Second Eurasian Women’s Forum brought together over 1500 women-leaders from 110 countries in St. Petersburg’s Tauride Palace. Gülden Türktan, the Founder and the First President of W20, visited the event as part of Turkish delegation. Ms. Türktan believes that the Forum turned out to be very fruitful to meet a lot of successful women and full of events.
Each person, who had the opportunity to speak to Gülden Türktan during the EWF, was fascinated with her energy, intelligence, and charm. It certainly takes great inner strength to initiate and lead such platform as the W20. One must also remember that her home country is Turkey, where many people still believe women’s destiny is to just run the house and take care of their families. Nevertheless, Ms. Türktan is a truly positive person. 3 years ago, she said: “Role model women encourage other women. After all, what we need to do is to inspire other people and be an inspiration to other people”. So no wonder Gülden Türktan supported the idea of our new project called ‘Global Marathon of Women’s Success Stories’.
Throughout the Second EWF, Ms. Türktan attended Women 20 open session, gave her speech at the ‘Global Initiatives in Women’s Interests’ open debate, and received Supporting Women’s Initiatives prize in the nomination of Women and Social Movements.
On the Forum’s platforms, Gülden Türktan repeatedly highlighted the importance of women’s global cooperation for the sake of solving pressing issues, including gender-related ones.
During her speech at the ‘Global Initiatives in Women’s Interests’ open debate, Ms. Türktan told that she was a board member of the international engineering conglomerate. She was the only woman there working among 8 men.
Ms. Türktan often faced difficulties while advocating for her ideas. However, she was never afraid to express her opinion. Her decisiveness and self-confidence guided her on her way to the position herself to be the chairperson of the company’s board of directors.
Self-reliance is not common for all the women in that kind of situations. According to Gülden Türktan, that is the reason why it is necessary to develop measures to support women, working in different spheres.
The speaker mentioned that G20 unites countries collectively making 85% of global turnover. Eliminating economical inclusion gap by 25% by 2025 is only possible by multiplying each one of the G20 nations’ potential.
According to her, nowadays the target in many countries is that women head around 30% – 33% of the companies. If we can reach such a result in these digitilized economies, all the G20 countries will succeed.
In her interview for the news agency of the Eurasian Women Community, as the Founding President of W20, she highlighted the necessity of promoting transparency for faster solutions. According to Ms. Türktan, it is essential to share more about women’s activities and achievements while providing for the new opportunities to exchange their experience. She said it is necessary for the women to have one common voice for all the women issues in the world.
Gülden Türktan enthusiastically supported the idea of ‘Global Marathon of Women’s Success Stories’, which will lead to women around the globe sharing about their achievements, accomplishments, projects, and the experience they gathered. Ms. Türktan expressed a positive intention towards distributing the information on the global marathon in her country.
Eurasian Women’s Forum is one of the most respected platforms for solving global issues. Gülden Türktan mentioned that the speech conducted by the Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Forum’s opening ceremony has been a very impressive speech for her where the President had a full command of the work and agenda of the W20 within G20. Mr. Putin spoke about Russia’s National Strategy for Women in 2017-2022. According to Gülden Türktan, Russia, being one of the most powerful countries, will be providing for the essential experience and support concerning the trending gender issues.
Gülden Türktan received Second Eurasian Women’s Forum Prize Public Recognition – 2018 award on September 21, 2018.
Second Eurasian Women’s Forum Prize ‘Public Recognition – 2018’ award ceremony was held in the Catherine Hall of the Tauride Palace. Gülden Türktan received her Public Recognition Award from Valentina Matviyenko, the Chairperson of the Council of Federations in Russia as the Founding President of the W20 Turkey- the Women outreach group of G20, Women in international and nongovernmental movements, for her initiation and support for the for Women’s international stance in G20.
The award symbolizes recognition of the merits of women in the formation and implementation of a modern agenda, overcoming difficulties in the struggle for goals important for the global security and attaining a sustainable development path for the societies. Among other laureates of the award in 2018 were Amal Abdallah Al-Kubaisi, Fumiko Hayashi, Hayriniso Yusufi, Son Myong Kim, Debbie Deegan, Bettina Pfleiderer, Reiko Watanabe, Tatyana Chernigovskaya, Valentina Tereshkova, Natalia Zalevskaya, and Marina Ross.
Follow the link to read more about the ‘Public Recognition – 2018’ award ceremony: http://eawfpress.ru/en/the-second-eurasian-women-s-forum-prize/
Our interlocutress is a role model, as her success story inspires millions of women. One can sense the greatness of Ms. Türktan’s heart combined with her universal love for the whole world. The Second Eurasian Women’s Forum showed us once more that such determined women as Gülden Türktan are ready to join hands and act for the sake of sustainable development.
Kristina Danilina, news agency of the Eurasian Women’s Community
Translated by Nikolay Boykov and Nikolay Gavrilov
Source: http://eawfpress.ru/en/g-lden-t-rktan-on-the-second-ewf-and-gender-equality/