The increasingly popular online platform “Gocmen Anneler” (“Immigrant Mothers”) — or the “Immigrant Women’s Solidarity Platform” as the founders prefer it to be known in English — actively serves as the voice of Turkish women who seek a network, support and ways to share their experiences while living abroad. The results of the online survey “Immigration Routes” conducted with the participation of some 1,000 Turkish women who moved abroad in recent years were published at the end of March and provide fascinating insights into the experiences of these women.

“Gocmen Anneler,” founded by Pinar Erbas Erdurmaz and Esra Iyidogan Pencereci, started as a Facebook group in June 2017. They spoke to Al-Monitor and shared their story. The two businesswomen first met in Istanbul in 2007, and they soon became friends. Erdurmaz and Pencereci went through milestones in their lives around the same time — marriage, new jobs, children and moving abroad for their husband’s jobs, to Montreal and Dublin, respectively.

Moving to a foreign country brings with it many unknowns. “In the beginning, all our dilemmas, questions and basic needs were related to our babies and the desire to sustain their routines in the new countries. We were lost in topics related to immigrant motherhood,” Erdurmaz said.

Today, their online platform has grown into a popular site that brings together more than 14,000 Turkish women scattered across 80 countries, including prospective immigrants. Obtaining residency permits, learning a new language, children having to adapt to their new lives, raising bilingual children, finding a kindergarten or school, searching for a job and handling racism or violence against women are among the main topics of interest for the group's members. The site's latest sub-group, "Gocmen Anneler ve Ozel Cocuklari" ("Immigrant Mothers and their Special Need Children"), focuses on those with children with genetic anomalies, disabilities or special needs. Another sub-group, "Gocmen Anneler Okul Projesi" ("Immigrant Mothers School Project"), provides audio-visual content on other cultures and countries to a group of primary school teachers in Turkey.