Canan Arın

Mevhibe Canan Arın (born 1942) is a Turkish human rights activist. A noted feminist, she has co-founded several women's rights groups, including Mor Çatı and the KAMER Foundation. In 2020, Arın received the Anne Klein Women's Award in recognition of her work.

Early life and education Arın was born in 1942 in Ankara, into a Kemalist family. When she was 10, her parents divorced, and she moved to Istanbul with her mother, where she attended Istanbul Girls High School. Arın's parents were supportive of her receiving an education, and she studied law and political science at Istanbul University before moving to the United Kingdom in 1970 to study for a doctorate in constitutional law at the London School of Economics, though she was unable to complete her studies due to financial difficulties and returned to Turkey in 1975.

Activism Arın first became politically active while a student at Istanbul University, where she was an acquaintance of the revolutionary Deniz Gezmiş. After returning to Turkey in 1975, she established her own law office the following year. During the 1980s, following the 1980 coup d'état and subsequent military rule, Arın became involved with the second wave feminist movement, and began offering free legal advice to women experiencing domestic abuse. Arın has called for Turkish women from different backgrounds, including Kurdish, Alevi, and Kemalist women, to collaborate with one another to overcome ideological, religious and cultural boundaries and focus on improving the status of all women living in Turkey.

In 1990, Arın was one of the co-founders, alongside Şirin Tekeli and Nebahat Akkoç, of the Mor Çatı Foundation, an organisation that raised funds to establish Turkey's first women's shelter in 1995. She and Akkoç were among the founding members of the KADER Foundation later that decade, where Arın focused on supporting prospective female political candidates.

In 2021, Arın received the 13th International Hrant Dink Award.