50 Years of the Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin: Women’s Power, Building Bridges, and Inspiring Change
A project in collaboration with Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin
This collaboration celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin, the city's first migrant women's association. Founded on March 8, 1975, the association has been a powerful advocate for self-empowerment, social justice, and solidarity, championing the rights of women from Turkey and transnational communities.
Drawing from the archive of unpublished documents, participatory workshops, and informal interviews, we aim to celebrate the resilience and activism of migrant women, many of whom are from the working class.
Chapter I: Anniversary of the Association
As the launch of the project, Orta Okul created an exhibition including three works inspired by the archive of the Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin: a collection of original photographs and posters from protests in the 1970s and 80s, a chronology featuring unpublished documents, photographs, and informal interviews from the archive, and A Minor Detail, a participatory artwork exploring the minor details in grand narratives and historiography. The exhibition was opened on March 8th 2025, in the anniversary of the association.
Chapter II: Unheard Stories
The project Unheard Stories: Women of the Berlin Turkey Women’s Association and Beyond honors the 50-year history of the first independent migrant women’s association in Berlin, and the women who shaped its legacy. Following an exhibition and discussion on June 20 at the association’s premises, a series of participatory events will unfold throughout the summer of 2025.
From the exhibition. Photographed by Emrah Erdogan.
Chapter III: Participatory Workshops
Over the summer of 2025, we curated a 12-week participatory workshop program together with the regular members of the association.
Program Schedule:
June 27 – A Minor Detail Workshop with Orta Okul, Venue: Nachbarschaftsgarten Kreuzberg
July 4– Dance Workshop with Gizem Aksu, Venue: Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin
July 11 – 50 Years, 10 Meters Workshop with Orta Okul, Venue: Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin
July 18 – A Minor Detail Workshop with Orta Okul, Venue: Spore Initiative
July 25 & 26 – 5 duyu 1000 yayla with nanay fanzin, Venues: Nachbarschaftshaus Urbanstraße & Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin
August 1 – 50 Years, 10 Meters Workshop with Orta Okul, Venue: Spore Initiative
August 8 – Suyun Alfabesi with Bilge Emine Arslan, Venue: Urban walk
August 15 – 50 Years, 10 Meters Workshop with Orta Okul, Venue: Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin
August 22 –50 Years, 10 Meters Workshop with Orta Okul, Venue: Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin
Also see:
Chapter IV: Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin:
The 50-Year School of Feminist Struggle and Solidarity
At the end of the 50. year, we collected the stories in a digital publication format through diverse methods for storytelling: a chronology of the association, testimonies from women who have shaped the association, oral history pieces, and voices from different generations. Together, these narratives depicts a living legacy of feminist struggle and solidarity across decades.
More than a record, this publication is a testament to collective labor over time and a vital source of inspiration for contemporary feminist movements.
Project coordinators: İpek Çınar and Ece Gökalp
Design: Salih Gürkan Çakar
Excerpts from the publication. Please visit Türkischer Frauenverein Berlin for more details.
A Minor Detail
A Minor Detail is a participatory artwork that we produced during the summer workshops. It takes its name and inspiration from two women: the Palestinian author Adania Shibli, who draws attention to the place of small details within grand narratives, and the Zaza migrant Beser Sonar, who told us during one of our gatherings that, when she first moved to Germany, she had to cook her meals without salt for weeks because she did not know what the word “salt” was in German.
This work encapsulates small stories that have been lost or nearly forgotten within the major narratives of migration. The stories told become visible by being inscribed onto small clay tablets, which are shaped and molded together with their storytellers.
For more information, visit here.
"Because I didn’t know the German word for 'salt,' we ate our food without salt for months."
"My friend was deported because she was pregnant."
I" don’t feel happy in either country."
"To be able to teach a typewriter course, I first took a typewriter course myself."
"During the Metal-İş strike in Turkey in 1975, we went door to door collecting money."
Also See:
Küçük Bir Ayrıntı (A Minor Detail)
Küçük Bir Ayrıntı (A Minor Detail) workshop is inspired by two women: Palestinian author Adania Shibli, who, in her book of the same name, addresses the place of minor details within grand narratives, and Beser Sonar, who, when she first moved to Germany, had to cook her meals without salt for weeks because she didn’t know what salt was called in German. In this workshop, different generations of migrant women from Turkey came together around a table to make clay tablets inscribed with minor details from migration experiences.This work will be part of the 50th-anniversary exhibition of the Türkiye Kadinlar Birliği (Women's Union of Turkey), on the evening of Saturday, March 8th.
Tea Sugar Dream
Tea Sugar Dream focused on the themes of migration and joy, in collaboration with women who migrated from Turkey to Berlin during the 1960s and 70s. How did women, who moved to Germany without knowing the language and often worked in low-paying jobs or unpaid domestic labor, preserve their joy during their migration experiences? Could their methods serve as guidance for new generations of migrants? Building on these questions, Tea Sugar Dream carried out projects centered on collective joy.
This collage was created in October 2023 by a group of migrant women, and was dısplayed on a billboard in Berlin.