On March 8, International Women’s Day, women’s rebellion and anger left their mark on the streets. At both the source and the target of this rebellion and anger was the AKP’s misogyny, continuing with increasing intensity for twelve years.<\/span><\/p>\n March 8, a day of struggle for women, held greater significance for women in Istanbul this year. Women who called for a gathering in Taksim, where the ban on marches had continued for months, became thousands in Galatasaray Square and flowed onto \u0130stiklal Avenue. We will offer an assessment of this mass march, a source of hope for women’s struggle, and of what followed. First, however, we want to reflect a little on what the growing numbers in streets and squares each year mean for those of us who seek to expand women’s struggle.<\/span><\/p>\n Women’s accumulated anger against the AKP first manifested itself in the abortion protests. Women for whom coming together was difficult for various reasons took to the streets and forced the AKP, whose every word became law, to take a step back. Over twelve years, women responded to male-dominated, reactionary interventions in their bodies and lives by taking to the streets in greater numbers. The violence and anger the Prime Minister directed at women on television continued to turn, in homes, streets, schools and workplaces, into femicide, hostility to labor, dismissals, forced marriages in childhood and countless forms of misogyny. For precisely these reasons, every woman taking to the streets targeted the Prime Minister and AKP government, whose corruption, plunder and theft had been exposed.<\/span><\/p>\n The June Uprising that began with Gezi Park emerged in just such a period. Gezi statistics show that more than half of those taking to the streets were women. The observations of each of us on the streets already supported this finding. Many women who went home in the evening or never left home throughout the day joined or called for actions in city squares and their neighborhoods. In the forums that emerged after the protests, women again stood at the forefront and began organizing events around women’s agenda. This is important evidence showing that women were not merely symbols of courage in the June Uprising. The solidarity that the Gezi uprising taught everyone anew, taking us back to the beginning, also produced the most developed examples of women’s solidarity. In building and defending barricades, resisting police violence and harassment in custody, women demonstrated the finest forms and examples of solidarity.<\/span><\/p>\n The fact that the banned square had become a site of resistance against AKP fascism certainly played an important role in thousands of women answering the call to Taksim, the location of the Feminist Night March. Women saw Taksim as the place where they could speak most powerfully.<\/span><\/p>\n The influence of the March 8 Feminist Night March, sustained for twelve years through feminists’ efforts and turned into a focal point of mobilization for women’s struggle, this year became the center of accumulated anger at misogyny.<\/span><\/p>\n March 8 has shown that women will hold the AKP to account and women will bring down the male-dominated order. Leaving aside the problems within the March 8 action in Taksim, the struggle of women claiming their lives and their determination to be in Taksim despite all bans have the potential to open the door to entirely different struggles.<\/span><\/p>\n Regarding the Problems at the Action:<\/b><\/p>\n After such a large action, we must make a brief statement about the negative developments that led to its ending, without seeing much need to discuss at length how they happened (much has been written on this). The march that thousands of women began from Galatasaray Square, defying the marching ban, encountered a police barricade before reaching the French Consulate. When we reached the barricade, organizations that had decided to hold March 8 actions in Taksim were waiting in front of it with male participants and organizational flags.<\/span><\/p>\n In accordance with the decision we had made with the components of the Feminist Night March, on whose action committee we served, it was not possible to join our action with the friends waiting at the police barricade because of their form of participation. After waiting a long time at the police barricade, the organizations at the front acted according to their own plans when the Feminist Night March contingent arrived, without trying to reach an agreement with the march’s initiative, thus failing to recognize the will of tens of thousands of women. The inability to find a common solution with the friends at the front heightened tension before the police barricade. Some organizations, in line with the initiative of the Feminist Night March, put away their flags and continued waiting at the barricade as women only; others maintained the initial situation.<\/span><\/p>\n At this point, because we believe the women’s movement will grow through women’s own strength and organization, we criticize the organizations that fail to recognize the decades-long will of the traditional night march attended by thousands of women.<\/span><\/p>\n On the other hand, we believe that the feminist movement, with which we think we share many points of agreement and from which we have learned many principles of women’s struggle, fell short, in its decision to end the action, of the will demonstrated in this march by thousands angrily denouncing misogynist policies, and of its potential to take women’s struggle a step forward. We expect women of the feminist movement, with whom we meet on grounds that advance women’s solidarity and struggle, to make greater efforts to resolve problems of the kind that arose at this action together with other women outside the feminist movement and to carry women’s struggle further. We believe women from the feminist movement need to take greater responsibility for strengthening all women, whether from mixed organizations or not, at every kind of barricade (misogyny, anti-feminism and so on) confronting us in all spheres of life in the struggle for women’s freedom. Moreover, we consider this commitment and responsibility an unavoidable duty of feminist women.<\/span><\/p>\n As Halkevci Kad\u0131nlar, we stayed until the end of the action. The reason for this choice was to leave the demonstration area in a deliberate way, with a call for the next day’s rally, rather than let the action fade out.<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, the June Uprising and the current process have affected, and continue to affect, ways of doing politics. We now see far more people taking to the streets in response to different calls and with different expectations. Women courageously resist every guise of male domination everywhere. In fact, as political women long involved in politics, our task is to try to get to know and understand women taking to the streets and to create the grounds on which we can expand women’s struggle together. Hanging back when women could do more may cause women’s struggle tomorrow to begin from a much weaker position.<\/span><\/p>\n As women who defied all bans and flowed into Taksim on March 8, we are now stronger; we will win. The courage of women’s militancy and our centuries-old sisterhood have the strength to overcome every barricade before us.<\/span><\/p>\n Halkevci Kad\u0131nlar<\/b><\/p>\n March 17, 2014<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Halkevci Kad\u0131nlar reflects on women’s growing resistance to AKP misogyny and explains its criticisms and decision to remain at the 2014 march.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,192],"tags":[76],"year":[],"fgy_konu":[],"fgy_slogan":[],"fgy_mekan":[],"fgy_kisi":[],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-97","category-tartisma","tag-tartisma"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8502,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/8502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/year?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"fgy_konu","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fgy_konu?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"fgy_slogan","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fgy_slogan?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"fgy_mekan","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fgy_mekan?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"fgy_kisi","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fgy.catlakzemin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fgy_kisi?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}