LONG LIVE MARCH 8!
8 March 2024
This year, too, like every year, we enter March 8 in a climate where thousands of women are murdered and thousands of women are subjected to violence. While violence against women is maintained in all its dimensions, we, as women human rights defenders, once again underline our commitment to the struggle for women’s rights on March 8, International Women’s Day.
The struggle for women’s liberation continues. But wars in many parts of the world also continue. Male-dominated and militarist state policies impose war on women. Women are the greatest victims of war. Today, in many parts of the world, in Rojava, Palestine, Israel, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, women are the victims of war.
In our lands, the established state policy continues to impose male violence and feudal value judgments on women. Officials who have withdrawn their signature from the Istanbul Convention, which is the greatest achievement of women’s own struggles, continue to implement discriminatory policies against women. Domestic law on violence against women and discrimination against women is not implemented, and the international conventions signed are constantly violated. Those who should produce solutions become perpetrators. Laws are violated. Women’s achievements are destroyed.
The mentality of those in power, which has made violence against women an official policy, is trying to take away all the gains of women in the field of law. Today’s discussions on alimony are the product of such a mentality.
The language of the state reveals an approach that generates violence and hatred against women and LGBTI+ persons. This patriarchal, feudal, and militant understanding is imposed on society by using all the means of the state itself.
Women are subjected to oppression and discrimination in all areas of life. We are subjected to violence on the streets, violence at home, violence in detention, violence in prison, and violence in our workplaces.
As poverty and crisis deepen, so do pro-war policies while the greatest victims of these pro-war policies are women. Women still face the pain and hardships of the massive earthquake that hit the country hard last year. Women, whose right to housing has been destroyed, continue to live in deep poverty and cannot even access their basic needs. The language of violence used by the state spreads throughout society. As a result of the socialization of this language of violence, femicide has skyrocketed. In the last month, 36 women were murdered by men and 17 women died under suspicious circumstances. Not only are these figures extremely horrible, but they also show the magnitude of violence against women.
Women’s right to freedom of expression and freedom of association are also under great pressure. Women’s organizations are constantly subjected to police harassment, torture and ill-treatment during their street demonstrations. Ordinary and political women prisoners are subjected to strip searches and various acts of torture and ill-treatment.
The death of ordinary prisoner Duygu Koral, who was tortured to death in Kandıra Prison last year, was the most concrete example of violence against women in prison. There are also many sick women prisoners. Sick women prisoners continue to live in prison due to the medically unethical reports of the Forensic Medicine Institute about women prisoners with severe illnesses.
Trans women are also subjected to great oppression. First of all, their right to life is violated. Many trans women are murdered by men. Their right to housing is prevented by state forces. For instance, a few days ago, the houses of trans women living on Bayram Street in Beyoğlu, Istanbul were sealed, and state forces threw trans women, many of whom are elderly and sick, out on the streets.
Women are the most affected by the discriminatory asylum policy of the Turkish state. Asylum-seeking women are subjected to violence and hate speech both in life, on the streets, and in removal centers.
The economic crisis is hitting women the hardest. Male violence, which finds justifications for itself due to the economic crisis, imposes more violence on women.
Despite all this oppression, the women’s struggle continues despite the great economic collapse, pro-war policies, and violence. This year on March 8, we once again remember the power of the women’s fight for liberation, and as human rights defenders we say “We are everywhere to spite you.”
At home, at work, at school, on the street, in detention, in prison… Everywhere we say “We are, we shall be” against war, against male violence, against discriminatory policies, against homophobia and transphobia.
Long live March 8!
Women of İHD