KJA celebrates new legal status

2015-05-30 09:38:03

DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) - The main Kurdish women's movement organization, Congress of Free Women (KJA), celebrated the opening of its  headquarters in Diyarbakır on Friday with an opening ceremony.

The Kurdish women's movement began work as the Democratic Free Women's Movement (DÖKH) in 2004 at a congress in Istanbul. At a congress of all women of Kurdistan, called by DÖKH on January 31st of this year, hundreds of delegates voted to now organize in a new form: as a congress. The Congress of Free Women (KJA) has now been granted the legal status of an association by the Turkish state and moved into a two-story building in Diyarbakır.

KJA President Ayla Akat Ata spoke at the opening to a crowd of Diyarbakır women dressed in their traditional clothes.

"We will stand beside Farkhunda, killed in Afghanistan. We will say to those who did not hear Özgecan Aslan's voice: 'you are the killers,'" she said. "In the Middle East, in Kurdistan, in every part of the world there are women resisting." She referred to the Mirabel sisters in the Dominican Republic, the women of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the 1956 Women's March in South Africa, saying "their struggle is Kurdish women's struggle." 

Ata called attention to the accomplishments of the Kurdish women's movement, including the new academic discipline of jineoloji (knowledge of women) and the gender parity system in politics. Since the Kurdish women's movement pushed for all political activities to involve a co-chair system of one man and one woman, the system has spread across Turkey. "We threw bureaucratic politics and relations with capital in the trash. We said 'we're here' and we will continue to be here."

After the speech, the Kurdish singer Zelal Gökçe performed to the crowd, packed into the narrow street outside the building. Women from the Peace Mothers Assembly cut the ribbon on the new building.

(cm/nt)