2013 Press Statement
Our Bodies, Our Lives, Our Decisions Are Ours!
Keep your family for yourselves!
As women from Turkey, we have spent the past year resisting and struggling against government policies that, in pursuit of protecting and strengthening the family, increase pressure on women and try to make them dependent on the home, family and husband through the perspectives “family before women” and “women for the family.”
Slogan: We are women, not the family; we are in feminist revolt
The AKP government sees our women’s bodies as machines to be put to work increasing the population, through its impositions of “motherhood,” “honor,” the acceptable wife, “three to five children,” and its practices imprisoning women at home. By trying to ban abortion and putting obstacles in the way of actually obtaining one, it produces policies that exert pressure and domination over our bodies and narrow the spaces in which we live.
Slogan: AKP, take your hands off my body
Abortion is a right, the decision belongs to women
Male violence surrounds women’s lives at home, in the streets, everywhere. The state, which recognizes women only within the family, also offers its social policy solely through the family, as though it were a favor! Women’s inability to access their rights when subjected to violence, and the discouragement they experience in courthouses, governors’ offices, shelters and state institutions, force them to return to the violent environment.
Slogan: Support women, not the family
The state tries to condemn women to the heterosexual family; it denies sexual orientation and gender identity, and the existence of lesbian and trans women. Trans women are excluded from society and forced into sex work. Trans people are killed, and their killers receive sentence reductions for unjust provocation.
Slogan: The murder of trans people is political
Slogan: Do not be silent, shout: lesbians exist
In Turkey, three women are killed by men every day, one in three women is beaten and one in five women is raped. In this land where violence runs rampant and women’s lives are not safe, there are only 103 shelters. The state, capable of every kind of mathematical calculation about increasing the population, suddenly forgets arithmetic when it comes to the number of shelters! Life in the existing shelters is structured to send women back to their families, back into violence.
Maintaining its sexist language by naming them “Koza” (Cocoon), the government has put Violence Prevention Centers into operation, placing men and women under the same roof. These structures, preparing to take on the mission of family guidance offices and family counseling centers that mediate between women subjected to violence and violent men, serve men, not women. We object to this practice in principle.
Slogan: Prevent murder, not divorce
Law No. 6284, enacted with the claim of preventing violence against women without taking women’s organizations’ objections to its content into account, has been in force for a year, but its implementation is left to the whims of the individuals and authorities women approach. Women’s right to life is left to the discretion of police officers, judges, prosecutors, governors and district governors. Practices without standards discourage women during judicial proceedings too. Decisions are made through sexist assumptions, not with the aim of supporting women. The law serves men, not women! From the word “Family” placed in the name of Law No. 6284 to its organizational structure, the Ministry operates in every respect to perpetuate male domination. Yet you cannot oppose male violence by strengthening the family. If you side with the family, you do not side with women!
Slogan: You kept saying family, family; you devoured our lives!
As women, throughout our lives we see the state search for excuses to legitimize violence against women by invoking consent in rape and unjust provocation in femicide. This year, the cases of Nevin and many other women showed us that women are isolated before the male judiciary, forced to secure their own justice to protect themselves and resist male violence. They exercise their right to self-defense!
Slogan: Real justice, not male justice
As women living in Turkey, we have repeatedly stated how profoundly the environment of war and conflict that has lasted for thirty years, and state militarism and violence, affect all women. Over the past year, oppression of Kurdish women in particular has intensified through the state’s nationalist-sexist policies. Women have been and continue to be arrested for attending the March 8 Rally, teaching, thinking, expressing their thoughts or simply being Kurdish. We demand that arrests stop and those in prison be released. Turkey has been witnessing a new negotiation process for some time. As women who experience the consequences of war and conflict and who struggle, we take a side in this process. We say “Peace, right now!”
Slogan: We insist, insist on peace
The intervention against İŞTAR, the women’s counseling center doing shelter work, the arrests of women from İŞTAR, and the closure case brought against the feminist women’s organization VAKAD clearly demonstrate the state’s attempt to obstruct Kurdish women’s organized struggle. As feminists, we will continue to stand alongside both İŞTAR and VAKAD.
Slogan: Woman, life, freedom
Slogan: Long live women’s solidarity!
On March 4, women who went to the Directorate of Family and Social Policies to protest the AKP’s sexist policies and unfurled a banner in the building were subjected to police violence and torture, precisely while Fatma Şahin was inside condemning male violence. State and male violence cannot intimidate us!
Slogan: Let the father come, let the husband come, let the state come, let the baton come,
revolt in defiance, revolt in defiance, freedom in defiance!
Today is March 8! Women’s day of struggle and solidarity! We women reject the idea that today’s family order, which condemns us to labor slavery, lifelong caregiving, violence and oppression, is the only legitimate and desirable way of life! If your sacred family means women being killed every day, imprisonment in marriage, bearing children for the state, we revolt against this imposition! We continue our struggle against capitalism and patriarchy, against men and male-dominated power, a struggle we bring into being through our actions, revolt, resistance and women’s solidarity.
Istanbul Feminist Collective/March 8, 2013
Slogan: Long live March 8! Long live our organized struggle!