 | ||
Februniye Akyol (Christian name: Fabronia Benno) is an Assyrian politician and co-mayor of Mardin (as of March 2014). She is Syriac Orthodox, thus the first Christian woman to lead one of Turkey's 30 metropolitan municipalities. The daughter of a silversmith, she hails from Tur Abdin, the Syriac heartland.
Put forward as a candidate by the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Turkey’s main Kurdish party, in municipal elections on March 30, Februniye Akyol was elected co-mayor of the southeastern city of Mardin together with Ahmet Turk, 71, a widely respected veteran Kurdish leader. The BDP splits all top posts between a man and a woman to boost female participation in politics.
“The Kurdish party has enabled me to fight for my people and its rights, and this is what I am going to do,” Akyol told Al-Monitor in an interview in Mardin. She was the second most popular candidate, getting support from almost half of the Kurdish population in Mardin.
Born and christened Fabronia Benno, she had to run for office under her official Turkish name, Februniye Akyol, because of long-standing restrictions on the cultures and languages of ethnic and religious minorities in Turkey. Since the Syriacs are not officially recognized as a religious minority by the Turkish state, they are also not allowed their own schools to teach their ancient language to their children. Turkish constitution prohibits using other than Turkish as an instruction language in public and private schools. Many Syriac villages were destroyed by the Turkish military during the Kurdish-Turkish conflict.
