WOMEN DEMAND PEACE
On the 8 March International Women’s Day, women, as always, continue to struggle against all forms of rights violations imposed on them with the belief in their struggle, with the strength given by the women’s liberation struggle. We all experience the difficulties of being a woman in the territory we live in grievously, since the established understanding that dominates our geography is extremely masculine, feudal and militarist understanding.
Since the Republic of Turkey is not a state of law, it cannot be determined enough to adequately implement even its own domestic laws related to women. Moreover, the international conventions signed are not put into practice in any way. Women continue to be the biggest victims of violence in our geography. Men continue to commit femicide with the ‘power’ provided by the established understanding of honour. There are more murders committed against women than there are days in a year. Moreover, these are femicides where the accused is known. Unsolved murders of women, where the accused are not known, are not counted in these numbers.
The Republic of Turkey signed the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention in 2011, which is the best international convention on violence against women to date. One of the most important and perhaps the most decisive articles of the Convention reads as: “No custom, tradition, no sense of honour can be considered as justification for any acts of violence against women.”
This understanding, reflected in the Convention, began to trouble the authorities sometime later. The established understanding of “honour” as the justification of violence against women was being questioned by the Istanbul Convention. The authorities did not accept this and refrained from this questioning, and in 2021, with the signature of a single person, Turkey withdrew from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention.
After withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, the increase in violence against women and femicides was not a coincidence at all. The state’s policy of violence and hate speech in all fields was irresponsibly reflected in the state’s language, which unfortunately continued to spread in the society by producing violence. As a result of this spread, there has been a great increase in violence against women.
Women face serious problems also in the field of freedom of expression and association. Their own self-organisations are subject to constant state control, their press statements or street demonstrations are constantly prevented, exposing women to state violence. Women are also subject to constant pressure in exercising their freedom of expression.
Today, many women politicians, journalists and human rights defenders are in prison simply for expressing their opinions.
Women also face great oppression in the field of labour. They are subjected to violence in all spheres of life, perhaps the greatest of which is in the field of work. Their labour is exploited. Women’s labour is cheap. When women workers organise, they face the obstacles of the male-dominated understanding. In politics, too, women have to struggle hard to overthrow the male-dominated understanding.
Many ill women prisoners have no access to medical treatment in prisons. Female judicial and political prisoners are under serious repression. Women are subject to harassment by officers who enter their wards under the name of search. Every single area of their lives is constantly controlled. The fact that even their most intimate moments are being monitored by the cameras installed in the wards and cells is extremely distressing for women.
The environment of violence in our lands affects women the most. Women have given their most loved ones to these conflicts, so much so that there have been women who have lost their children, brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers. War hit women hardest. Women have experienced the worst form of violence against women, sexual torture, in times of war and conflict. As we already know very well that our geography is a geography of the dead without graves. In 1915, in 1938, in all the massacres in the region, in all these painful events, many women were left without graves. Genocides and massacres hit women first and foremost and continue to do so. Impunity, which is the main problem of the geography, has mainly affected women.
The Kurdish issue lies at the root of the problems we are experiencing. As long as the Kurdish question is not resolved peacefully, women’s rights will continue to be violated. It is for this reason that women attach great importance to peace and peace processes. The peace process will be a process in which the male-dominated, militarist and feudal understanding can be questioned. First and foremost, women’s demands are for the removal of all obstacles to their freedom of expression and organisation during the peace process. In this process, women also want the release of all political prisoners, the release of sick prisoners first, and they want to fight and speak out against the violations of their rights in all areas of life by guaranteeing their freedom of expression.
The women want the impunity to be put an end, all state crimes to be revealed and an environment for a democratic reckoning to be settled in this process. Women demand that all parties do their part to ensure that every painful incident that has fallen victim to impunity is re-examined and prevented from happening again.
Yes, women really need peace. That is why, in view of what has happened and the importance of the process that has not yet materialised, women want to raise their demand for peace on 8 March. Here we are, as women human rights defenders, we demand loudly that we want peace. And yes, we want freedom of expression and association. We want freedom for political prisoners. We want the release of all sick prisoners we demand that the political will to hear our voice fulfil the requirements immediately and urgently.
Women want peace, once again on 8 March.
JİN JİYAN AZADİ
WOMEN LIFE FREEDOM
İHD CENTRAL WOMEN’S COMMITTEE