While citing “high-profile women in power, accidental activists and not-so-ordinary women…who find themselves in a particular situation” as protagonists of women's rights, Melanne Verveer, the first U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, didn’t forget Mufstafa Kemal Ataturk during her visit to Atlanta.

Ms. Verveer recalled the words of the founder of the Republic of Turkey during the Halle Institute for Global Learning’s Turkish Lecture Series at Emory University on Feb. 3.

“As Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, noted – and I should certainly quote from that visionary individual in a Turkish lecture series – a mere 80 years ago, ‘a society, a nation, he said, consists of men and women. How is it possible to elevate one part of society while neglecting the other half and expecting the whole to progress?’”

Emory’s Halle Institute; Mona Diamond, Turkey’s honorary consul general for Georgia and the American-Turkish Friendship Council host the endowed series, which has featured other civic and academic officials such as Nabi Sensoy, Turkey’s ambassador to the U.S.

Ms. Verveer was appointed to the post by President Obama last year to head the State Department’s new Office on Global Women’s Issues.  She is the former chief of staff to Hillary Clinton during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as first lady.

She also spoke at the International Women Entrepreneurship and Leadership Summit that Ms. Diamond organized in Istanbul, Turkey, last year, during which Mrs. Clinton gave a specially prepared speech for the occasion by video.

During her lecture, Ms. Verveer said that as Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff she visited Turkey in the 1990s to meet with a variety of religious leaders. She then returned to Turkey in 2000 with President Clinton following an earthquake that had struck Istanbul.

She said of this visit, which took place at an “absolutely anguishing time” during which many of the survivors lost their homes, was particularly moving because she experienced “such graciousness, such welcoming spirit that they made to all of us Americans– so illustrative of the great hospitality and warmth that I always associate with Turkey.”

Ms. Verveer came to Atlanta from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where reports were submitted, she said, showing that “in no country are men and women equal,” in regards to health survivability, access to education, economic parity and political participation.

“The potential of women as an economic force has yet to be realized,” she added. “Women are still significantly outnumbered in the chambers of parliaments, boardrooms, at negotiating tables, where conflicts are often being resolve in ways that will affect them and their families and their communities but do not include them in the decisions.”

She called for women to increase their political involvement and gave examples of individuals who had played important roles in establishing laws and public outrage against honor killings, human trafficking, child marriage and domestic violence.

To learn more about the Turkish Lecture Series, go to http://halleinstitute.emory.edu/Speaker%20Series/Turkish%20speakers/index.html

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