2008 Press Statement – Kurdish
On the streets on March 8!
While we were preparing for this year’s March 8, we first learned that Ayşe Yılbaş had been killed in central Istanbul at the hospital where she was doing her medical-school internship, by her husband, whom she was trying to leave. Two days ago, 17-year-old Nagihan İlhan was also murdered in Êlih (Batman) with 10 stab wounds over an exchange marriage. With the same weapons that killed Güldünya four years ago on a February day; Güldünya, who dreamed of a future in which she would raise her child alone. The men closest to us kill us women with the strength they draw from the power of male domination.
We feminists know that ending men’s violence against women and achieving women’s freedom will be possible only through a major social transformation, and we celebrate March 8 as a day of solidarity and struggle against men’s domination.
Today, as women whose labor has been appropriated, condemned to slavery at home and lower wages at work, exploited in homes, workplaces and brothels, forced to endure beatings by their fathers and husbands, killed in honour killings, sold by international gangs into the prostitution industry, subjected to harassment and rape on the streets, at work, in war and in custody, we draw our strength from our solidarity. We never forget that we inherited March 8 from working women’s struggle to the death in the 1800s demanding shorter working hours and better working conditions. We do not accept March 8 becoming a day when roses are given to women.
We do not dismiss those who want to turn March 8, which draws its strength from the history of women’s struggle, into a day of conflict over the political regime, and try to turn this day into a day of a military memorandum for women and men with cries of “The homeland is slipping away!” Nor do we dismiss the ideas and views of those who say women should remain covered up/behind a veil. But we do not accept that women who want to attend school in a headscarf should be denied the right to education, a right of which men are never deprived, whatever happens.
We feminists see March 8 as a day of struggle against the system that tries to resolve every kind of rebellion by the oppressed through violence. We know that all weapons that target the Kurdish people, whether inside or outside our borders, target us too. In these days when dying and killing are glorified, we reject the duty imposed on women of raising children so that they may die for their homeland.
We know that our invisible labor at home also determines the wages we receive working for bosses. Even when we do paid work, we see the burden of housework also falling on our shoulders. We are aware that the oppression we experience at home is taken over by bosses. We feminists, just as we marched with the striking women of Novamed last March 8, marched with them throughout the year. This March 8 we are again with the Novamed women who slept in the strike tent for months and won their rights in this way. This March 8, we say “No!” to bosses who exploit our labor twice over, to men who appropriate our labor at home, to the government that openly cooperates with men and bosses through its social (in)security laws, and celebrate this day in this way. We shout our fundamental objection to the (in)security law that makes women dependent on their families, husbands and fathers.
This year hundreds of men entered 2008 in Taksim by harassing women in front of the cameras. We made clear that this is not just the filth of a few thugs, but that of male domination, which considers itself entitled to every right over women’s bodies; the police who closed their eyes to this harassment and these assaults, and the judiciary that did not apply the laws and waited for complainants, are just as guilty as they are. We prepared for March 8 by sharpening our purple pins. Against sexual harassment we say: “Do not stay silent, shout out, stick in the purple pin!” And this March 8 we make clear that we oppose the unjust provocation concessions given to men as rewards after the killing of women, and shout that we are women’s political partisans.
On March 8 we are again on the streets, saying that we will not give up speaking for feminist justice against men’s unjust order, and that our liberation is in our own hands.
We will not bow to men’s domination.
“For our liberation, we are stronger together.”