Sara Aktas: Speech in 5th International EUTCC Conference
Kurdishaspect.com - By Sara Akats
I’d like to start by welcoming all the participants. As a Kurdish woman, who was raised in the midst of the war in our country, and who now wholeheartedly wishes to see peace and fraternity take root on these soils, I sincerely believe that our partnership is very valuable for all of us.
Dear Participants,
Kurdish and Turkish people share hundreds of years of intertwined socio-cultural history. However, authoritarian and totalitarian approaches that emerged as the dominant ideological tools of the state rationality and, developing parallel to that, the state policies that deny and annihilate different identities, have been the main reasons for the Kurdish uprisings that have continued since the end of the 19th century to our day. The confrontational grounds that marked the last 30 years of Turkey have to be evaluated in the light of this historical reality. Evaluation of the issue as a concept of security and terror has gravely aggravated rather than contributing to the solution. It has become inevitable for the Turkish Republic to reject a pluralist and democratic method in the face of undeniable demands of the people. Consolidating this struggle for rights upon women’s struggle is indispensable for the understanding of justice and equality to fully settle into all levels of society. In this sense, it is clearly evident that the quasi-democratisation initiatives, which do not internalise the resolution of the women’s liberation as central to the issue, cannot maintain justice and equality.
A new society in which women will participate and form successive institutions with their free-will and consciousness can only be possible with the achievements of women’s movement. Women have been unable to freely participate and express themselves in the current system of Turkey . This situation has been one of the main handicaps in the democratisation of the republic. The state has evolved through masculine characteristics. We know that the unnamed war in our country is not independent from its dominant militarist, racist, sexist and masculine characteristics. Precisely due to this reason, it is of vital importance to do away with the oligarchic, militarist and masculine language and discourses of the constitution, which also includes the founding principles of the state.
Dear Participants,
Patriarchy is a standpoint that has social and cultural roots, and is strengthened and reproduced through political mechanisms. It is the system and regime of masculine social gender and that of the state, which is its concrete expression. The fact that repercussions of violence against women, war and conflict are felt intensely in our country and that violence against women has thus been rendered integral part of the system require us to evaluate it as state violence.
We are perfectly aware that all types of violence against women are political, that the state is one of the perpetrators who systematise the violence, which is also the power who protects the other perpetrators. State violence against progressive women appears as denial of basic human rights, torture rape and execution in police stations, under detention, at the medical jurisprudence, in prisons and courts. For instance, here are the data in relation to the first 10 months of 2008 according to the report prepared to mark “25th November International day of Struggle and Solidarity against Violence towards Women”, by the Legal Bureau of Assistance Against Sexual Harassment and Rape under Detention” established by women lawyers and human rights activists: A total of 36 women, 24 in prisons, made applications regarding sexual harassment under detention. One woman was detained while pregnant and another woman with her six months old child. It has been established that the perpetrators in 11 incidents were policeman, 25 were gendarme and soldiers, two were from special teams, 24 were prison guards, and one was a mayor. 28 women were detained due to political reasons, 27 detentions were due to their own political affiliations, and one was harassed due to her family’s political affiliations. 8 women were arrested for judicial reasons. One of these women claimed to have been raped by policemen 27 years ago as well. There have been 33 law suits on these claims this year, and only 5 have resulted in favour of the victims. While the duty of constitutions is to prohibit all sorts of direct and indirect sexual discrimination and provide the opportunities for women to benefit from basic human rights, the state uses judicial power too as its back up.
Dear Participants,
The evidence in relation to women’s situation today is sufficient to clearly demonstrate the accuracy of criticisms. Although women have been enfranchised, only in the early 20th century, effects of the rigid gender roles have been prevalent in Turkish history to our day. Kurdish women are twice the victims within these structural mechanisms. Denial of Kurdish identity, prohibition of education in languages other than the official one, and rejection of approaches in the resolution of the Kurdish issue other than the method of denial and violence, compel Kurdish women to struggle for their ethnic identity while also struggling against gender inequalities and masculine power relations.
In spite of all the oppression, Kurdish women have started a multi-faceted organised struggle. Although Kurdish women have recently been portrayed by the movie series as victims of mores who need saving, they are also creating the tools that reveal their motivation with the strength of organised struggle. In this sense what is really remarkable is the social, political and gender struggles of Kurdish women. As well as experiencing the intense effects of the war in our country, Kurdish women became the subjects of the war and acquired the consciousness of their gender in it. They also managed to create the social and political channels that equally strengthen them. The struggle for democracy which started with the political party in 1990s and the Patriotic Women’s Association in 1991, have been transformed into an organised gender identity, with the Mothers of Peace initiative at the public sphere, in politics, with the associations in solidarity with the families of prisoners, and with the women’s institutions that increase day by day as a result of serious endeavour and resistance. Kurdish women, who have place in many spheres at the moment in Turkey , have come together under the roof of Democratic Women’s Liberation Movement as a result of their organised will and common identity.
What I’d like to draw attention to here is that beyond their quantitative visibility in politics, Kurdish women struggle for their perspective to seep into all the levels of society and that the effects are being considerably felt in the political arena through the women’s institutions and civil society organisations. Despite women’s low level participation in politics in Turkey in general, Kurdish women demonstrate undeniably substantial involvement in the mechanisms of political decision making. A comparison between the levels of representation of women in general and that of Kurdish women would make this more concrete and understandable.
On the world scale, Turkey is the 72nd amongst 75 countries just before Egypt , Saudi Arabia and Yemen according to Gender-Related Development Index of Human Development Report 2006 of UN’s Development Programme. Lets consider the proportion of general political representation of women in Turkey : Only the 0.6% of mayors, 1.7% of general committee members in provinces, 2.5% of council members are women, as well as only 50 women members of parliament. So, only 9.1% of representation can be translated as a “syndrome of non-existence” beyond an injustice in representation. In contrast, lets compare the proportion of political representation within DTP; 17% of mayors, 7% of general committee members in provinces, 10% of councils, and the 40% of members of parliament are women. Kurdish women’s liberation movement constitute important evidence in terms of carrying their understanding to the centre from their own local organisations and central cadres without emulating the established policies of the cadres. Disregarding this would also mean to deny the existence of Kurdish women as the unrecognised ones of the unrecognised Kurds.
For this reason, the struggle for peace and democracy is not an abstract, far away dream for Kurdish women. Peace is not about silencing the weapons. It forms the terrain for the realisation of their own organisational activities. We will provide the peace ourselves with our own faith, will and determination.
Dear friends,
It should be mentioned that neither the women’s movements in Turkey nor the other social groups have been efficient in ending the war and democratisation of the state. The power of women in the anti-war struggle or the democratisation of Turkey does not stem from their innate peace-making traits. This approach feeds the theories that justify war by reducing it to a natural structure. It is matter of consciousness, organised work and struggle.
We know that women in organisations that do not possess this consciousness turn into mechanisms that support the war. Women, whose brother, son or relative go to war, are easily effected by the chauvinist anti-Kurdish atmosphere. Just as in the example in which the Mothers for Peace were confronted by the mothers of martyrs. Doubtless that as the women’s movements get organised and raise their consciousness, they will also manage to shield women against militarist mechanisms and even transform them. It should also be mentioned that women’s movements have not acquired a strategic role for themselves, despite the fact that the inefficient struggle for democracy in Turkey has been a serious experience. Although domestic violence has been the issue around which the women’s movements in Turkey formed a sort of partnership, there has not been any sufficient unification in terms of militarism or the Kurdish question. The organised women’s movement will create a strong synergy when this gap is closed.
Dear participants,
As is known, a struggle for democracy confined to a limited agenda cannot be efficient or provide any solutions. If there are problems in a social phenomenon that go back hundreds of centuries, if a just and honourable solution cannot be reached, it becomes necessary to look for the real problem inside the approach to the solution itself and in the realism and practicability of the approach. For this, it is firstly necessary to recognise the basic inalienable rights guaranteed by international agreements and to demonstrate the will, patience and determination by taking seriously the opportunities for solutions.
It is essential to accept that the solution to the Kurdish issue is above all a matter of recognising Kurdish people’s reality and the resultant national, cultural, social, economic, political rights and of the denial of basic human rights. A democratic and peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue is contingent on the constitutional maintenance of basic human rights. A constitutional approach based on the demands of peoples is inevitable against the oppression that is based on denial, annihilation and the interest of international capital, which aims to do away with people’s will and destroy legitimate defence. I believe the most accurate work that we, the Kurds did is to merge our destiny with that of the women. It is a remarkable attitude for a people to see their own freedom as a matter of women’s liberation.
Construction of democracy is surely also dependant on reaching a social convention. However, it would be impossible to talk about a social convention without facing the reality. Peace is not only a political but also social issue. Solidarity and organisational unity between Turkish and Kurdish women will play one of the most essential roles in creating the conditions in which people can exist together. In this sense, it is of vital importance to resolve the phenomenon that breed militarism, patriarchy and nationalism. Strengthening and spreading the partnership between women will help us to gain on peace or even to construct it. We, Kurdish women are not the victims harmed by somebody else’s war. We advocate and resist for both Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom and for Kurdish women’s struggle against the male dominant system. I’d say that faith, struggle and patience is essential for this and thank you all for listening to me.
Courtesy of Mezopotamian Development Society
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February 1, 2008
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