The radical feminist organizing in the MENA region emerged 20, 30, 40 years after the similar movements in the West. In Turkey, for example, it didn’t start until the late 1980s. This is not because the women in our region were stupid or were not politically engaged or did not have demands. It is rather because we were under autocratic regimes or in the middle of wars and post-colonial struggles that there was no space for any of these movements to rise. The moment a small space became available, you immediately saw these initiatives taking form. The problem is that by that time, there was already an international discourse at the United Nations around gender and development. So when these movements rose, they clashed with these existing structures of funding and NGOs and civil society that were already in place. Most of the initiatives were thus quickly institutionalized and tamed. And from this clash rose the whole debate on whether feminism is authentically local or a Western import.

My non-verbatim account of a comment made by Pinar Ilkkaracan at the GFW meeting in Jordan: Feminisms in the Middle East and North Africa