鈥淲e will resist and resist until we win!鈥 chants Sebahat Tuncel before her mouth is forcibly shut by half a dozen police officers who drag her along the floor and detain her in early November.
Nine years ago, a convoy of victory signs, cheerful slogans and flowers received Tuncel as she was released from prison to . Tuncel, now in jail again, is one of dozens of Kurdish politicians from the Peoples鈥 Democratic Party (HDP) and the regional Democratic Regions Party (DBP) arrested by the Turkish security forces since late October under Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdo臒an鈥檚 鈥渁nti-terror鈥 operations against those .
This crackdown follows the attempted coup in July and represents a re-escalation of the war between the state and the Kurdish movement since the summer of 2015, . Like the advice given to the German anti-terrorist squad in the 1980s 鈥 鈥淪hoot the women first!鈥 鈥 the toxic masculinity of the state became apparent in its declaration of a war on women; the strength of the militant Kurdish women鈥檚 movement poses the biggest threat to the system. Tuncel鈥檚 case is not unique.
At the end of October, was detained. She was the first female co-mayor of Diyarbak谋r and a former MP, who spent two years in the 1980s in the notorious Diyarbak谋r prison, where she survived the most atrocious forms of torture, such as having to live for months in a dog hut full of excrement because she refused to say 鈥淚 am a Turk鈥.
Her arrest was immediately followed by the violent arrest of , former MP and now spokesperson of the Free Women鈥檚 Congress (KJA), the largest women鈥檚 umbrella organisation in Kurdistan and Turkey, . She was hospitalised several times due to police violence during her parliamentary term and has survived assassination attempts.
Selma Irmak is among the MPs elected from prison, where she spent more than 10 years on terrorism charges and participated in hunger strikes.
G眉lser Y谋ld谋r谋m was imprisoned for five years before being elected.
Another MP is Leyla Birlik, who stayed with the civilians under military fire in 艦谋rnak during the entire duration of the military lockdown, witnessing the brutal killings of countless civilians by the army. Her brother-in-law, , activist and filmmaker, was executed by the army in October 2015; his corpse was tied to an army vehicle and dragged through the streets. Soldiers filmed this and sent the video to Leyla Birlik with the message 鈥淐ome pick up your brother-in-law鈥.
The list goes on. We chose such courageous women as our representatives. They are now political prisoners despite being elected by more than five million people.
The ultra-conservative policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) under Erdo臒an have led to the over the last decade and a half. Not only do high profile members of the administration, including Erdo臒an himself, frequently reject equality between women and men in favour of attitudes that normalise rape culture, gender violence and misogyny, the AKP further launches explicit physical attacks on women and LGBTI+ people.
The hyper-masculine state not only collectively punishes the Kurdish community as separatists, terrorists, or conspirators against the state, it portrays Kurdish women activists as 鈥渂ad women鈥, shameful whores and violators of the nuclear family.
Historically, rape and sexual torture, including post-mortem 鈥渧irginity tests鈥, have been used by the Turkish state to discipline and punish women鈥檚 bodies as noted by Anja Flach in her book Frauen in der Kurdischen Guerrilla. In prisons, women are subjected to intimate searches to humiliate them sexually.
Recently, soldiers stripped the clothes off Kurdish women militants鈥 corpses and . Another showed the Turkish army shooting guerrilla women and throwing them off mountain cliffs. German G3 rifles were used in the video, illustrating Western complicity in these war crimes.
While such atrocities were often committed secretly in the 1990s, sharing images on social media is a new attempt at demoralising women鈥檚 resistance and demonstrating state power. These methods resemble those of ISIS across the border. Sexually abusing an activist woman, who dares to challenge male hegemony, aims to break her willpower and deter further activism. The attacks on women politicians need to be read in this context.
Long before mainstream media was under fire in Turkey, reporters of , the first all-women news agency of the Middle East, were attacked. Committed to an explicitly feminist lens in their work, JINHA鈥檚 workers exposed the state鈥檚 crimes from a gendered perspective. Now JINHA is banned and several of its staff are in jail.
The HDP is the only left in Turkey with its secular, diverse, pro-minority, pro-women, pro-LGBTIQ rights and ecological agenda. It has by far the highest percentage of women in its ranks. Even without the system of 鈥 a policy of the Kurdish freedom movement that ensures shared leadership between a woman and a man 鈥 the vast majority of female mayors are in the Kurdish regions. Through a decades-long struggle, encouraged by imprisoned leader Abdullah 脰calan, the active role of women in politics is a normal part of life in Kurdistan today.
The women of the HDP and DBP do not embody bourgeois ideas of representative politics and corporate feminism. Almost all politicians currently under attack have spent time in prison and been subject to police brutality, sexualised torture, assassination attempts or some form of violent treatment by the state. They are always at the forefront in the protests against the state and army.
Women were also significant actors in the peace process initiated by Abdullah 脰calan with the Turkish state in March 2013. Every meeting on 陌mral谋 prison island included women.
In 2014, 脰calan recommended that women be represented in the meetings as an organised force, rather than only as individuals. Thus, Ceylan Ba臒r谋yan谋k joined the meetings as the representative of the women鈥檚 movement.
The , the first joint declaration between the warring parties, included women鈥檚 liberation as one of the ten points for justice and lasting peace. The state and media were unable to make sense of the Kurdish movement鈥檚 insistence on the centrality of women鈥檚 liberation in the peace process.
We face collective punishment for passing the highest election threshold in the world which requires a political party to win at least 10% of the national vote to enter parliament. Our cities are razed to the ground, our loved ones murdered, burned alive, bombed, shot or beaten to death. Our cultural heritage and environment are erased forever, our MPs dragged on the streets, our mayors replaced by governmental trustees, our media censored, our social media blocked.
By destroying the possibility of peaceful, legal politics within democratic frameworks, Turkey has left the Kurds with no other option than self-defence. International institutions, above all the European Union, have failed the Kurdish people by appeasing Erdo臒an. In other words, Western governments support the systematic elimination of one of the strongest and most radical women鈥檚 movements in the world.
The philosophy of the Kurdish women鈥檚 movement proposes that every living organism has its mechanisms of , like the rose with its thorns. This concept is not defined in a narrow physical sense, but includes the creation of autonomous self-governance structures to organise social and political life. Protecting one鈥檚 identity against the state through self-defence is partly enabled by building self-reliant political institutions.
In an era when women鈥檚 naked corpses are exposed on social media by the army and elected officers are subject to torturous abuse by the capitalist-patriarchal state, women are fighting back to show that their honour is not up for men to define because honour does not lie between women鈥檚 legs; it lies in our resistance, the resistance culture established by the trailblazers of our movement. Our jailed politicians defend this honour.
From prison, HDP co-chair Figen Y眉ksekda臒 sent : 鈥淒espite everything, they can鈥檛 consume our hope, or break our resistance. Whether in prison or not, the HDP and us, we are still Turkey鈥檚 only option for freedom and democracy. And that's why they are so afraid of us. Do not, not a single one of you, allow yourself to be demoralised, do not drop your guard, do not weaken your resistance. Do not forget that this hatred and aggression is rooted in fear. Love and courage will definitely win.鈥
[Reprinted from . Dilar Dirik is a Kurdish women's movement activist and writes on the Kurdish freedom struggle for an international audience. She is currently working on her PhD at the Sociology Department of Cambridge University.]