Despite being flooded by negative news from Turkey due to Kurdish, Syrian and Russian turmoil, the recent annual 2019 Turkish Fancy Women Bike Ride has given us some much needed grassroots balance, hope and biketivism positivity.
Fun, colour, community and flowerbikes – woohoo!
2019 Fancy Women on Bikes Ride
The Turkish Fancy Women Bikes Ride is held every year.
Thousands of women (and their friends, men too) get dressed up and ride decorated bikes around the city in order to increase the visibility of women in society.
I first posted about the Fancy Women Bikes Ride in 2016. If you have not read this post, check it out. Thanks to the support of A Might Girl, the post gives a detailed background about the ride, the organiser, key issues and some awesome resources.
Since 2016, the Fancy Women Bikes Ride has gained in attendance and reach.
Fancy Women Bikes Ride is now held in more than 100 cities worldwide, including Amsterdam, Athens, Milan, Washington and Edinburgh.
This year there were over 60,000 riders worldwide.
This isn’t a bike ride so much as a reclaiming of the streets – it’s about women making themselves visible in an outfit that doesn’t make cycling look like an urban battle. It’s a powerful way to rethink our streets so that they’re fit for everyone, however they choose to dress. Suzanne
The ride has expanded to represent wider gender rights and bike advocacy aims such as safety, awareness, better infrastructure and inclusion for all.
The event motto is: Cycling for not one but every day to encourage daily bike use.
The Fancy Women Bike Ride takes place every year on the World Car Free Day in late September.
Visibility and safety for women
Didem Tali sees this event as being a forum where the local women defy systemic intimidation and reclaim the streets. In Turkey, crooked roads, pollution, mushrooming construction and — most importantly — lingering sexism, means Istanbul and many other cities in Turkey and beyond aren’t always hospitable to women.
Catcalling, harassment, intimidation and road rage are very common experiences that Turkish women experience in the streets every day.
Event origins
Writer Pinar Pinzuti explains the origin of The Fancy Women Bike Ride as coming to life in 2013 thanks to Sema Gür, who hoped to challenge the male-dominated world of cycling in Turkey. Sema, a teacher living in Izmir, created a Facebook event and invited her friends to come together for a bike ride one Sunday afternoon. It was by coincidence that it was on the same day as the annual World Car Free Day, during the EU’s Mobility Week.
Sema ür learned to ride a bike at the age of 39 and she started to participate in bike tours in her city. She realized immediately that the bicycle scene was dominated by men. Men choose the cycling route, men decide how fast the group should pedal and men also say how women have to dress during the bike tour. Sema did not agree.
Therefore, she decided to organize an “easy” ride in the city center of Izmir for her friends and asked them to wear whatever they wished, regardless of what the common dresscode would be. Her friends and other women loved the idea and they came to the event with flowers and balloon decorated bikes.
The foundation for an annual event organized by women for women was set. In the following year The Fancy Women Bike Ride already expanded. Volunteers from Istanbul, Ankara and a couple of other cities organized women bike rides at the same day and same time.
The event is organized by volunteers who are eager to promote cycling to their peers. Hand-in-hand with the organization of the ride they ask local authorities to increase safety on roads, create urban cycling infrastructure and plan bike-friendly services.
Although the event itself is once a year, the women’s peer-to-peer initiatives last all year around. Women organize cycling courses in their communities, group rides for the weekends, cycling events for families with small children.
