08.03.2021
We Do Not Give up on Our Fight for Women!
On 8 March 1857 women garment workers in New York started going on strikes in their workplaces demanding equal rights with men. Their demands were clear and just: “Improved working conditions, a ten hour day, equal pay for equal work.” In a fire that broke out in one of the strikes 129 women workers lost their lives. In 1910 Clara Zetkin suggested to commemorate 8 March as the International Women’s Day at an International Conference of Working Women and the suggestion was agreed on unanimously. Since then 8 March marks the International Women’s Day. We speak out on every March 8, representing a turning point in women’s rebellion against the thousands of years of oppression, and say: “We are here; our fight will go on with the legacy of the past and the responsibility for the future.”
We do know and live conscious of the fact that women fight every day unabatingly throughout the world while patriarchal policies persist to condemn women to inequality. Women have always been the most oppressed group in each era in history. The system established and maintained by men resort to mechanisms of oppression, violence and threat to prevent women from living as equal and free individuals and exercising the right to have equal say. Our living spaces are made to become more restricted, our right to work is being taken from us, and we are being condemned to inequality.
Today the comprehension and practice of power are engaged in a hostile policy against women. The inherent dignity of the human person is violated and such practices are attempted to be legitimized. Women are subjected to strip-searches in custodial centers and prisons, when they protest they are subjected to force and battery. Women in abduction attempts by persons identifying themselves as police officers are threatened, insulted and tried to be suppressed based on their private lives. Women in prisons fight for their lives in the face of gross human rights violations. Women who are held in prisons with their children are forced to live an unbearable life but the representatives of the political power are keen on accusing the victims rather than eliminating this degrading treatment and virtually take a position to defend torture.
Women have been the most victimized group during the recent pandemic. More than 600 women lodged applications before the İHD within the context of economic and social rights since the onset of the pandemic asking for financial aid. Women face hunger, poverty and helplessness. Women employed in domestic jobs became unable to do so while it was the women in workplaces to be fired first. It was women again who were to be sacrificed first in economic crises.
Women are murdered, subjected to violence, harassment and rape while the perpetrators of such heinous crimes are virtually awarded by policies of impunity. Women are left without any protection whatsoever against domestic violence. Only a small number of cases are reported to judicial authorities and by the press, and violence at home is merely being rendered invisible. Such invisibility, in turn, puts women’s lives at risk and women are forced to keep on being silent because of fear. The number of shelters is insufficient and the term of stay is restricted. Women, whose living conditions are not guaranteed at the end of these terms, become vulnerable to violence and have no chance other than returning to places where they faced violence because they do not have economic independence. Everyday a woman is murdered. Although Nadira Kadirova was found dead at the residence of an AKP deputy, the investigation was not conducted effectively and the file was closed in spite of evidence pointing that she was murdered and her family’s pleas. Gülistan Doku has not been found yet. The man who murdered İpek Er is free.
The political power has constantly been producing discriminatory speech against the LGBTI+ and been creating hate crimes, committing all kinds of discrimination, violence and ill-treatment making them the most disadvantaged group in the society. The authorities have constantly been banning and curbing any protest and event by the LGBTI+ while the police use violence against participants amounting to torture. The political power aims to create a desirable society on its own terms while producing discriminatory speech against everyone who falls outside its own conception and attempts to make the LGBTI+ even more vulnerable in a homophobic and transphobic society.
Women who were made victims of war or economic refugees are subjected to all kinds of labor exploitation, violence, discrimination, harassment and rape, and made unable to seek their rights. When women who came in to work file complaints about the violence they were subjected to they risk deportation and are thus forced to submit to violence and oppression. Women who have to seek asylum in Turkey because of the war in Syria have no guarantees and are victimized due to many barriers including language. Women report that they were subjected to discrimination and insults in removal centers and lived in prison conditions.
Those who govern the state signed the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the İstanbul Convention) in 2011. This convention is one that is very important for women’s rights and to criticize gender-based and sexist policies. This convention prescribes that “culture, custom, religion, tradition or so-called ‘honor’ shall not be considered as justification for any acts of violence.” The political power that signed the İstanbul Convention is now trying to bring it into question. Women and LGBTI+ will not let this happen. We will keep on opposing all kinds of patriarchal, feudal and militarist conceptions and practices imposed upon us.
We, the women, demand an equal life and freedom, and fight to achieve these. We do not want any favors from patriarchal powers; we want to produce, develop and maintain our own policies for our own rights. We are and will be fighting for our rights and our fight that they try to suppress through economic, political and legal apparatuses or violence will persevere. We have never surrendered to and will never surrender to any kind of oppression. We refuse the political power’s conception to create desirable women, a desirable family, a desirable society. We will stand hand in hand against the patriarchy and patriarchal mentality, and will step up our fight.
Long live women’s fight!
Long live 8 March!
Women from İHD