According to the dictionary Oxford Languages, “Community” means “the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.” Fortunately for all the girls who skate - or want to start - in Turkey, such a community exists and has a full name: Girls Skate Turkey.

Though it is easy to affirm that, it wasn’t easy nor planned to have such a female space representing a worldwide popularly male sport. It wouldn’t be any different in a country where male presence is for a fact accentuated.

The “founders” of what now is Girls Skate Turkey however would like to remain anonymous. “Our main goal isn’t to pull our names out there nor bring any audience to ourselves. Everything started spontaneously and we have far too many girls producing content and managing what is now a community. For that reason, we prefer to not quote any names. We all work together”, tells a spokesperson to The Dank Project.

All the pictures in this gallery were taken by Şevval Yeksan.

“GST was created on July 21st, 2019 as a response and an awareness to the conversation of skateboarding becoming introduced into the Olympic program. Once the conversations started to circulate in our skate community in Turkey, we suddenly realized there was a huge misconception dominating everyone's mind: “Girls don't skate!” But we, the older generations surely knew this was wrong and even talked about the unprecedented rise of up and coming girl skaters in the brand new concrete skatepark of Maltepe, Turkey. Then it became our mission to show and display what was so obvious to us: girls and women of all ages in parks, basketball courts, inner city and outer city, skating and practicing by themselves.’’

Using the power of social media, they decided to try and find some of those skaters and reach out to them. Initially that was the idea: to connect and skate together. “We just had a chat and thought it would be cool if we found the girls and used Instagram as a tool to connect with one another”, she says.

"We realized those girls were so young and skating quite far from where the community skates. We all know this is a male dominated sport and it's only natural to show up at a spot and be intimidated, scared or ashamed of skating side by side with the locals, especially if they don't look like you. What we wanted to show is how great the skate community and culture can be to those who feel on the outside and show the people on the inside that women and girls all over Turkey are here skating!"

Initially they decided to create a group chat on Instagram. They added a few girls here and there and told them to invite other friends if they felt like it.

“The moment we started their reaction was so interesting! Because a bunch of girls started to join and add other girls. We never saw ourselves as “leaders” or people who know better than other people, we just wanted to reach out to say ‘hi, let’s skate together’. But their reaction showed a crave to be part of something where they actually feel comfortable.”

The simple plan of uniting a couple of other girls altogether in one space turned into the need of creating something bigger: the demand was obvious and so was the will of everyone to feel heard and supported. With that in mind, the founders wanted to see who else was out there looking to be seen. That is when they released the hashtag #kayankizmivar – “Kayan kız mı var?” which translates to “Are there any girls skating?”

“That was an obvious rhetorical question, because in general this is what we would hear when we bring the subject of female presence in the skate community”, explains the spokesperson. Through the hashtag however was when they realized the woman skaters were spread all over Turkey, and that was a big shock.

“The girls started to join the group and ask if there was something to be part of, such as a WhatsApp group or an Instagram page. That is when we decided to create a page and make a call with who was already on the group chat to see what role they wanted to play in this community. We are now eight girls taking care of GST's existence, but we are proud to say we all work together for the benefit of us all, no matter what city or hell, no matter the country at this point!”

And she is right. Together they have decided to create a simple and obvious name, making it easier to find them and reach out to them. That is how UK’s Rachael Sherlock found and reached out asking if the girls would like to participate in her series of videos COLLECTIVES – the series created by Rachel in collaboration with SKATEISM.

Backlash and rising above it all

I am sure it comes with no surprise to you, dear reader, that a collective of girls trying their space on a sports scene received an absurd amount of backlash from people everywhere. “We received messages from little kids, like 12 years old or so, asking us ‘why are you doing this?’ And it was the weirdest thing. But what is the point of asking why or trying to minimize our existence? That is exactly why we need representation and space. We demand so and we created it”, completes the spokesperson.

Almost two years in, they are now mostly free from such aggressive reactions and growing strongly in their goal: to be a strong community and to stimulate one another to keep going, while creating their own visibility.

“Skating might be a solo sport, you are alone in your deck, but you are not alone in the park! It is a community after all and we should remain strong. If you want to get better, you need people around you. You need people motivating you, helping you, showing you that ‘hey, it is possible to achieve whatever trick you would like to do and we are here for you’.”

With the pandemic, the GST could barely meet in person or accomplish the regular encounters they imagined to do so when it all started. However, that isn't a reason for them to stop motivating each other through their Instagram page.

“For us what matters the most is to break the stigmas around skating. We have girls texting the page and saying where they live, they are barely the only girls around skating. They skate in their shorts or in their hijab, they try their best to be practiced even if their families wouldn’t allow them to stay out past sundown.”

For the forsaken future we can expect more actions on their social media page and, hopefully soon, events and dates among them all over the country. You can follow and support Girls Skate Turkey on their Instagram page.