|
Female firefighter Dilara Karabulut with her team at work at traffic accident in Sisli district, Istanbul, Turkey, 04 October 2021. The historic 100-year-old firefighting department in Istanbul, since the summer, has welcomed women in Turkey, a majority Muslim country ruled by the Islamic conservative AKP, to its ranks. “When I grow up I want to be a firefighter” was not something any of these 37 women ever said when they were girls. Even though there have been female firefighters in some towns since 1988, seeing a woman wielding an axe and hose in Turkey is still extremely rare. “It's not considered a woman's job, but since I was little I used to do things that are seen as boys' jobs, so my family didn't see anything unusual about it”, says Ceyda Cirik, 22, at the fire station in Basaksehir, a suburb of Istanbul. She has just returned from an operation in a burned-out factory, along with her colleagues Esra Ücler and Rüveyda Tös. The three of them are part of a team with about 10 men who, after initially viewing the new recruits with suspicion, soon got used to the novelty. Being a firefighter has a long tradition in Istanbul, which was formerly built almost entirely of wood. The volunteer fire departments, the so-called 'tulumbacilar' of the 18th and 19th centuries, with their iconic uniform of jacket, stilts and sash, became an image of masculinity and courage. The offer of 50 vacancies for female firefighters – 37 of which only could be filled, as not all candidates passed the exams and physical tests – is quite the political statement from the Istanbul mayor's office, which since 2019 has been in the hands of the social democratic CHP party, the AKP's main rival. (Photo by Sedat Suna/EPA/EFE)
|
