OUR RESPONSE TO THE ISTANBUL FEMINIST COLLECTIVE’S STATEMENT:
1) Our organization did not inflict violence on any woman or LGBTI individual during the March 8 actions in Taksim. No organization or individual making or circulating defamatory statements against our organization with these allegations has contacted us or sought our account of what happened during this process, nor have they responded to the statement we issued on March 8.
Making statements alleging that we attacked women on March 8 without even establishing a dialogue with us, let alone initiating a legal process, is unethical; this method of summary judgment, inference and punishment has no place even in bourgeois law.
If necessary, a legal commission excluding the parties should be formed to uncover the truth and investigate the respective allegations. If we did carry out such an attack, we accept in advance, as of today, that we must offer the necessary self-criticism and apologize. But IFK and the organizations circulating its statement must take the same attitude toward the truth that emerges, and be able to offer the necessary self-criticism and issue a statement.
Having issued a statement without such a process, IFK must explain and apologize for its declarations that we attacked women.
2) Contrary to the claim, Kaldıraç did not participate in IFK’s 12th Feminist Night March on the evening of March 8. Kaldıraç independently called an action in Taksim for March 8, International Working Women’s Day. Our action began at 19.15 on İstiklal Avenue, from Balo Street toward Taksim. At that time, IFK was assembling in front of Galatasaray High School. In other words, we had no contact with IFK’s action along the marching route.
Our march joined the March 8 action initiated by EKA (Emekçi Kadınlar) at 19.00 that evening, in front of the police barricade at the French Consulate. Our action continued in front of the barricade with slogans and speeches.
Three separate organizations called actions for March 8 in Taksim, an important space of action and resistance for all social forces and a site of state bans on demonstrations. In a space where the state bans actions but cannot prevent them, in Taksim, no one can claim authority over the actions of social forces and organizations on any date, including March 8.
IFK recognizes no initiative other than itself and declares its own monopoly over the March 8 actions in Taksim. Taksim is free! The streets are free!
3) When the contingent of the night march called by the Istanbul Feminist Collective approached Zambak Street (thirty meters before the police barricade and our position), a friend representing IFK came to our representative and said, “Because of the mixed groups’ action, we will cancel the press statement we were going to make in Taksim Square. Our action has been sabotaged because of you.” Our representative said that all organizations could carry out their actions there; that our action did not obstruct the night march’s advance; that we had also moved our male comrades outside the contingent; and that, as women, we would move toward the square. The IFK representative left, saying, “We cannot hold our action under these conditions.” Despite there being no such situation, she announced to their contingent that “The statement had been planned for the square, but because mixed groups had formed a second barricade in front of the police barricade, it would be made not in the square but where the contingent stood.”
As Kaldıraç and EKA, organizers of two separate actions, pushed against the police barricade to enter Taksim Square, some women participating in the night march moved toward the barricade while others tried to end the action. As the night march’s representatives called out, “Other (!) women, leave,” the police announced, “Stay away from the group at the front!” and “We are not intervening against the ladies; we are intervening against the women at the front.”
4) After the push against the police barricade began, the IFK representative began calling on us to lower Kaldıraç’s flags, as if the action belonged to IFK and no other action could take place there that night. We said that our action was continuing and that we would not lower our flags.
No force can interfere with how another force expresses itself at an action. Everyone can express themselves in red, purple, rainbow colors… in whatever colors and symbols they choose. Calling out “Lower the red flags” when there is no joint action and no common rules binding the parties is presumptuous.
The same outlook tried to intervene in our contingent at the March 8 action in Ankara, saying, “Put away the red flags; get yourselves purple flags.”
5) After IFK representatives announced by megaphone that “they had ended the night march and had been unable to enter the square because of Kaldıraç,” instead of leading chants of “Police out!” they began leading chants of “Kaldıraç out!” in front of the police barricade.
IFK claims in its statement that we do not see the feminist movement as legitimate. Yet we have never, in any way, intervened in any women’s organization or action, or in IFK’s March 8 action or discourse. On the contrary, IFK’s effort is to deny the legitimacy of the socialist movement by intervening, through us and the other revolutionary organizations in front of the barricade, in socialist thought, socialists’ forms of expression and their symbols.
We invite IFK to be more tolerant of views other than its own on this matter. Such hostile attitudes damage not only the revolutionary movement, but also women’s struggle and social struggle.
6) IFK’s statement says, “Worse still, after we, as the action committee, had to end the action because of this situation, these groups that had intervened in our action gathered their flags and silently withdrew.”
After pushing against the police barricade, the action continued for some time with slogans and further pressure on the barricade despite the gas and kicks from the police. It was not police intervention but IFK’s intervention and the arguments they instigated that had a dispersive effect on the action. Following these arguments, chants of “Kaldıraç out!” and verbal harassment of our comrades, we decided to end our action.
7) In its statement, IFK names and targets the revolutionary organizations in front of the barricade, including us, one by one without saying a single word about the police barricade or police violence. This clearly reveals the intentions of those who issued the statement.
KALDIRAÇ
March 10, 2014