Women march for victims of femicide
DİYARBAKIR (DİHA) - Women marched through the town of Ergani, Turkey yesterday for two local women attacked in just 10 days. The women took to the streets to condemn the wave of femicide committed with impunity in Kurdistan and Turkey.
Femicides and violence against women have been at the top of the agenda in the district of Ergani. The population of the town and its villages is just 119,000, but the high rate of violence has driven women (led by the Congress of Free Women [KJA]) into the streets.
19-year-old Mutlu Kaya was shot in the head on May 17 by an attacker who entered her home. She had become nationally famous as a contestant on a televised singing competition. Just three days later, longtime domestic violence sufferer Hacer Aladak was trying to escape to a women's shelter when her husband strangled her in front of her children. The women's movement in Kurdistan and Turkey has accused the Turkish state of directly encouraging such attacks by frequently issuing sentence reductions for perpetrators of violence against women.
"In both these events, is it just the murderers or armed attackers who are guilty? Of course not," said Dürdane Peker of the KJA, speaking at the end of the march in Sakine Cansız Park. "It's perfectly obvious that the biggest reasons for these events are social pressure, inadequate state institutions and the view towards women."
Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Diyarbakır MP candidate and KJA supporter Nursel Aydoğan was among the many local politicians to attend the rally. She denounced the justification of femicides as "honor killings." She spoke to the crowd, carrying photographs of slain women, including women like Sakine Cansız and Kader Ortakaya killed by the Turkish state.
"We want to say here as the KJA: we have never been a man's honor and we never will be," said Aydoğan. "We have said that our honor is our freedom, and until we win our freedom we will keep on struggling."
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