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The women’s movement in Turkey's
Kurdistan: Interview with Professor Mary Davis
18.8.2012 |
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Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, which supported the
delegation, interviewed Professor Davis on her
return to the UK.
August 18, 2012
Peace in Kurdistan
Campaign
With over 6000 people currently in prison, including
nearly 100 journalists, 40 trade unionists, hundreds
of elected mayors, councillors and local officials,
and thousands of members of the Peace and Democracy
Party (BDP), Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
his AK Party appear to be relentless in their
efforts to suppress the Kurdish struggle for
liberation. Since 2009, thousands of these arrests
have been made in the name of the ‘KCK operations’,
which has targeted individuals for allegedly being
members of the Union of Kurdish Communities. The KCK
is a civil society organisation that the Turkish
government claims is the urban wing of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) and that has been officially
designated as an illegal organisation by the
government. Along with Turkey’s widely criticised
anti-terror legislation (TMY), these policies have
led to Turkey having a third of the world’s ‘terror
suspects’ residing in its jails.
In many ways, it is on this front of Turkey’s war on
its Kurdish citizens where the government’s approach
is most insidious. To form a coherent, strong and
resilient political movement in these conditions is
extremely difficult. There are, however, a growing
number of grassroots, local and national projects
and initiatives that aim to confront this
repression, and many of them are being led by
Kurdish women. Professor Mary Davis, well-known
academic, trade unionist and former elected member
of the TUC women’s committee, recently returned from
a solidarity delegation to North Kurdistan where she
met with a number of the women at the forefront of
this political movement.
Professor Davis has reported that in every one of
the projects she visited – from the women-run news
agency JinHa, to the women’s advice centre Dikasum,
to trade union officials and the women’s section of
the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) – she was told
that ongoing military conflict, state repression,
internal displacement and patriarchal violence have
continued to exacerbate the oppression of women in
the region. Nevertheless, women’s organisations
continue to be amongst the most visible of the
Kurdish liberation movement.
Put into historical context, this in itself is not
new. The women’s movement in Kurdistan has long been
seen as critical to the struggle for
self-determination. Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned
leader of the PKK,www.ekurd.net
has repeatedly asserted that women’s emancipation is
crucial to the development of a truly democratic
society: “Women are putting up vehement resistance…
This opposition by women shows us something: without
the struggle against the patriarchal ideology and
morals, against their influence on society and
against patriarchal individuals, we cannot achieve
freedom in our lives, nor construct a true
democratic society – so socialism cannot be put into
effect. People aren’t just longing for democracy,
they want a democratic society without sexism.”[1]
The reality is that the struggle against this
‘double repression’, the fight for rights as a Kurd
and as a woman, puts women at great risk of arrest,
violence and maltreatment by the State. Senior
female BDP members, and high level female officials
at trade unions like KESK (Confederation of Public
Employees Trade Unions) have been detained, and the
numbers are disproportionately high – in the last
three years, seven of the senior union members
arrested are the female secretaries of KESK and its
affiliated unions. KESK’s militant and vocal
opposition to the AKP, and to nationalism,
militarism and racism in general, has also led to a
variety of attempts to dismantle the union. Most
recently, on 25 June, 65 members were detained in
raids across 20 cities in one day. They are now
awaiting trial.[2]
Professor Davis was part of an international
delegation which was initiated by CENI – Kurdish
Women’s Office for Peace. With 12 delegates in all,
the group visited a variety of women’s
organisations, women’s rights and human rights
groups based in and around Diyarbakir (Amed), to
strengthen solidarity with the women’s movement and
the trade union movement.
Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, which supported the
delegation, interviewed Professor Davis on her
return to the UK. The delegation was made possible
due to generous contributions from the
Lipman-Miliband Trust, UNISON South Lanarkshire and
UNITE London North West Branch.
—–
In Diyarbakir, you visited
the women’s advice centres Dikasum and Kardelen,
which have had to cope with the effects of both
patriarchal violence and state repression. What are
your impressions of their work?
The women’s advice centres do very necessary work,
because as in most countries, in Kurdistan women
really do face the brunt of the violence and the
ideological attack by the State. One of the things
that I think is important to note first of all is
that the number of rapes and physical violence
against women seems to be increasing
exponentially.[3] But I also remember that I asked
one female BDP official ‘What is the AKP’s policy
towards women?’ And she said, without a smile on her
face, ‘Islamism’. What they want to do is to
‘islamise’ women so that they know their place, that
means they will try to build a lot more mosques in
Kurdistan (which is a relatively secular society
compared to Turkey). Erdogan has got the reputation
in the West of being a secular leader, which is
quite a misplaced reputation. So I think the women’s
advice centres are very important. And they also
important because women can go there if they suffer
domestic violence – and they still do, despite the
fact that the policy in the region is that if any
man workingfor local government is found guilty of
domestic violence, he would lose his job and he
would lose all his benefits. I don’t know of
anywhere else in the world that has such a
progressive policy. We heard this from the mayor of
Amed, Osman Baydemir, who is a man and a
self-proclaimed feminist!
Jinha, the women-run news
agency, was set up just a few months before you
visited Diyarbakir in March 2012.[4]What did they
tell you about their aims and strategies for
resisting patriarchy in media coverage?
The Jinha news team were very interesting, because
they knew they couldn’t get the news about women
reported properly, and so I thought to [establish a
news outlet such as this] was a remarkable thing to
do. [The media world] is such a masculine culture,
and they were very keen on presenting the women’s
perspective on everything. The other thing that was
very interesting about them was that they wanted to
internationalise the women’s struggle. They didn’t
want their struggle to be just a Kurdish one, but
they wanted us to send them our reports from the
women’s movement internationally. I mentioned to
them the Women’s International Democratic Federation
(WIDF), and I thought it would be good for them to
link up with that organisation, because they include
almost every country in the world and have
[international] conferences. I just thought it was
incredible – they wanted news reports from other
countries from across the world, as they said it
would inspire the women of Kurdistan, and I can
understand that. To know that women are fighting all
over the world. [Even in Britain we are still
fighting], and domestic violence is still a real
issue. Of course everything is that much worse in
Kurdistan –and indeed, the State backs the attacks
on women. They also use a beautiful symbol, a
butterfly, which we saw everywhere, which seems to
symbolise where they are going – peace, feminism and
freedom.
Members of the
Confederation of Trade Unions for Public Services (KESK)
has been subject to dozens of arbitrary arrests and
imprisonment in recent months, culminating in the
arrest of 65 union members in one day as part of the
KCK operations on 25 June this year.What did the
KESK officials that you met explain to you about the
current situation?
We met trade union representatives both in Amed and
in Van. We met women representatives from KESK, the
umbrella organisation, which has within it a number
of different unions. But the number of unions has
been reduced severely by the Turkish state, who have
been really clamping down on trade unionism. The
people who are most in the line of fire, it seems to
me, are trade unionists, who they call ‘terrorists’,
and especially women members. (The BDP comes third,
and that goes without saying, but of course all of
these groups and organisations are deemed to be
‘terrorist’ simply because they are not AKP!) So
trade unions are nominally legal but in reality they
are not allowed to function freely.
The officials we met were very angry because they
didn’t think that anybody outside Kurdistan was
taking up their cause. And actually they are quite
right. Those trade unionists were arrested for no
other reason than the fact that they are members of
a trade union. This is in defiance of all ILO
conventions.
In Amed, they expressed a desire to come to London
and I told them I would attempt to facilitate that,
and arrange a visit whereby they could meet the
General Secretary of my union, UCU, who is also the
chair of the TUC International Committee, Sally
Hunt, also for them to meet Francis O’Grady, the new
general secretary of the TUC and also the president
of RMT. I hope to have an emergency TUC motion in
place. [We exchanged emails] and hopefully something
can come out of that.
Those arrests have prompted
statements of solidarity from some international
organisations, such as the International Federation
of Human Rights Defenders (FIDH).[5] Should the
trade union movement, in the UK and internationally,
make stronger calls for their release?
I have seen more [statements on this issue] than I
have seen in the past, which has surprised me,
because I think Kurdistan is the forgotten cause of
the entire labour movement, and particularly Kurdish
trade unionists.
Despite the severity of the
repression there appears to be strong political
engagement from Kurdish women, which is shown by the
variety of women-run projects that are confronting
some of the most difficult women’s rights/Kurdish
rights issues head on. This has corresponded with
more and more women being arrested for defending
human rights, and subject to prison and
mistreatment.[6] What did the BDP tell you about
this situation in the current context?
First of all, what struck me was how many women were
in leading positions in the BDP. I thought it was
fantastic – so many more than here, where we think
that we are so ‘right on’ because there are women on
the television. [Whereas in Kurdistan, too often
stereotyped as a so-called “backwards” country by
many in the West], they really mean what they say
[when it some to women’s empowerment]. So I think
the Turkish state is very scared of women, and that
is one of the reasons they continue to prohibit the
language. So they violate women, and they pinpoint
women as the source of political terrorism. In a way
this ties in with the Peace Mothers, who we met in
Van. What incredibly brave women they are – their
children are up in the mountains as freedom
fighters, or dead. Now these were quite elderly
women, but they all came to Ahmed for the July 14th
demonstration. I thought they were amazing.
You were in Diyarbakir on
14 July during the demonstration organised by the
BDP – what did you witness on that day, and what
were your impressions of how the police and the
state mobilised against the demonstration?[7]
The police were utterly appalling. It was a
completely peaceful demonstration, and what did they
do? They had – and we’d seen them gather in the
previous days – armoured cars and tanks lining the
streets. It made me think of civil war, and in a way
it was a civil war. I was supposed to be going on
the coach with the politicians but the coach wasn’t
let through, which of course meant the politicians
weren’t let through. [Instead we travelled in a car,
a diplomatic vehicle], and we were able to pass
around the city and see what was happening. I saw
some horrifying things; for example one elderly man,
just trying to cross the road, and suddenly the
police started throwing rocks at him, then tear gas,
and then used a water canon. And all he was doing
was crossing the road! We went back the following
morning because we heard there was going to be
another demonstration, and they took our passports
when we tried to get into Sumer Park. I thought it
wasn’t a particularly good idea to go back, because
you cannot deal with such force unless you have
counter force, and unless you have the numbers that
counteract it, and I realised that a log time ago.
But the others wanted to make a statement, which is
fair enough.
Jeremy Corbyn MP, Jill
Evans MEP and Lord Hylton recently travelled to
Ankara to discuss the deteriorating human rights
situation in Turkey, and a number of individuals
they met expressed concern that Turkey is being held
up as a model democracy in the Middle East, while
the persecution of the Kurds is ignored by the
international community.[8] Did you find the same
concerns amongst the people you met? Given the UK
government’s support for Turkey’s ‘fight against
terrorism’ and the string economic and military ties
between the two countries, do you suppose we’ll see
any pressure on Turkey to commit to human rights
standards coming from the UK government?
People asked us about this a lot, about the UK and
the German government, but I did get the impression
that the [Turkish state], and Erdogan in particular,
was a ‘street angel and a house devil’. He’s an
absolutely appalling person. In fact, I remember
seeing a rally that he was speaking at on
television, and I thought it was crypto-fascist. The
whole thing was Hitlerite [in feel]. I think that he
really does completely and utterly fool the West. We
had had a discussion with a newspaper editor in
Batman just before we left, who asked why the UK and
others are ignoring the repression of the Kurds. I
said to him the reason is that Britain is basically
following the same policy they have pursued from the
Ottoman empire onwards, which is to maintain a
Turkey which is one single state. Then it was all
about the Berlin to Bagdad railway. Now the oil is
important, and hence for geopolitical reasons there
must be no dismembering of the region. And they
don’t care what government it is as long as they can
keep Turkey together. And they will never talk about
Kurdistan, they don’t care. These aren’t people who
care about human rights – though they might talk
about it – but really, they are like smiling
crocodiles.
Interview conducted by Melanie Sirinathsingh, Peace
in Kurdistan Campaign
Notes
[1] Abdullah Ocalan, The Revolution is female, Il
Manifesto, 09 March 2010.
[2] http://bianet.org/english/freedom-of-expression/139357-police-detain-65-union-members-in-kck-probe
See also Trade Union Activists are in Jail in
Turkey, but why? by Zeynep Ekin Aklar and Gaye
Yilmaz.
[3] The ratio of murders of women increased by 1400%
between 2002 and 2009 under the AKP government,
according to Ministry of Justice figures.
[4] The Jin News Agency, Turkey’s first women’s news
agency, broadcasts in Kurdish, Turkish and English.
[5] Along with statements by the International
Federation of Human Rights Defenders (FIDH), other
actions in solidarity from the international labour
movement include protest letters sent to PM Recep
Tayyip Erdogan by the International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC), European Trade Union
Confederation, and Public Service International (PSI),
as well as Education International and LabourStart’s
online campaign defending the arrested trade
unionists.
[6] For an in-depth analysis of the risks faced by
women human rights defenders in Turkey, see a recent
report published by London-based Kurdish women’s
group, Roj Women, called ‘A Woman’s Struggle: Using
gender lenses to understand the plight of women
human rights defenders in Kurdish regions
Turkey’,available to download on their website.
[7] ANF Firat News report of the clashes between
protesters and police: http://peaceinkurdistancampaign.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/clashes-in-amed-14-july/
The women’s delegation has also produced an
eyewitness account of the police response to the
demonstration.
[8] More information on this parliamentary
delegation, the first of its kind to the Turkish
Assembly, is available on the Delegations page,
where a copy of the report is available to read and
download.
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author or news agency,
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