ANKARA – Speaking before the DEM Party Women's Council meeting, Co-Chair Tülay Hatimoğulları said, "The electon results gave us great morale and increased our hope."

 

 

The Women's Council of the People's Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) convened at the headquarters of the party to evaluate the election results and determine the line of political struggle. DEM Party Co-Chair Tülay Hatimoğulları spoke about current developments before the meeting.

 

Hatimoğluları said: "We will evaluate together the opportunities created by the elections in terms of women's struggle in the new period and draw our road map. The election results gave us great morale and increased our hope. We entered these elections under unequal conditions. In these elections, especially AKP and its partners carried out an election activity using all the resources of the state. However, as the DEM Party, we carried out these works in a great impossibility, especially the censorship we saw in the press, but by creating these opportunities ourselves.

 

10 CENTERS WERE USURRED

 

Especially in Kurdistan, the AKP government carried out a fine engineering work and transferred very serious voters to the municipalities where we lost by a narrow margin, or to the municipalities with fewer voters, where the equation would change if the votes were shifted at a certain rate, to a total of 32 centers. Despite all its efforts, AKP could not get the results it wanted in the region. We, as the DEM Party, managed to turn this upside down with the active work we carried out with our valuable people. We lost 10 centers in quotes like this. Although it seems that the 10 central municipalities were won by the AKP with the voter relocation and trustee voters, in the real sense, when we look at the conscience of the people and the real list of the voters, the AKP never won those municipalities. We hereby declare once again that AKP took these 10 centers from us by usurpation."

 

'WE THANK THE PEOPLE OF ŞIRNEX'

 

Reminding that more than 8,500 soldiers were transferred to Şirnex, Hatimoğulları said: "I would particularly like to underline that there were 6,940 male voters in just one school in Şırnak. They were all soldiers and voted for the AKP. 6,940 votes were from one school for the AKP. This is almost a usurpation, a policy of occupation. We have never accepted this, we do not accept it. We know that the people of Şırnak are carrying out this struggle in the strongest way, and the struggle symbolized by our brother who said 'Speak, who are you'?’ It was one of the strongest responses given. We would like to thank the people of Şırnak."

 

Hatimoğulları said: "The locomotive power of the work we carried out as DEM Party was our women's council, and all the valuable women. Our mothers worked day and night and put their heart into this work. Our mothers once again supported the Kurd's struggle for democracy and rights, with the work they carried out in these elections, all their feelings and thoughts were solution-oriented. With the same understanding, women worked day and night against the trustee regime, especially in Kurdistan and throughout Turkey, and each of them worked like a secret hero." 

 

'4 WOMEN WERE MURDERED IN 24 HOURS'

 

Hatimoğulları continued her speech as follows: "The previous day, 4 women were murdered in 24 hours. Ciğdem Ağrıda Esma in Istanbul Sancaktepe, Kübra in Balıkesir, Türkan in Antalya were murdered by their spouses. In the first 3 months of 2024, 91 women were murdered by men. While the murders of women, violence and massacres against women continue in this way in the country, we are also experiencing the special war policies carried out against Kurd women very intensely. As a matter of fact, the harassment of women by the specialist sergeant in Şırnak, which is intended to be the center of the war, is not independent of these policies. When we went to Şırnak within the framework of the campaign, one in every two people was a soldier. Some of them were brought from outside even though they did not live in Şırnak.

 

Those who target our women's freedom struggle with these police-led policies must know very well that the Turkish women's movement and the Kurdish women's freedom movement will never give credit to them, and will continue to produce policies in the strongest way against them.

 

GULISTAN DOKU FOOTBALL TOURNAMENT

 

Youth are organizing a Football Tournament, referring to Gulistan Doku, who has been missing for 1,566 days. They put forward this tournament as a stance against the policies implemented both on youth and young women. We support the campaign they define as an alternative sport against chauvinist, sexist industrial football. We would like to express our gratitude to the DEM Party youth who supported the ‘Where is Gülistan Doku?’ campaign for the lost Gülistan Doku. We will be together in the tournament.

 

THE SUCCESS WE ACHIEVED IN KURDISTAN IS HISTORY

 

We are again in this election campaign; Especially in the work we carried out in Kurdistan, we witnessed the collapse of the collapse plan that had been initiated for a long time against the Kurds, combined with the trustee regime. The situation that emerged in Kurdistan, the success we achieved in Kurdistan despite the trustee regime and the state mobilizing all its resources, is a very important and historical success. While we achieved this success, we emerged from these elections determined to further expand our struggle. We carried out a very strong work here, especially in our Women's Council. We witnessed this once again in this election campaign; We strongly felt the local reflections of the co-presidency and equal representation system and the male-dominated authoritarian mentality. We saw that systematic attacks against our women's policies, especially the co-presidency and equal representation system, were very seriously revealed in these elections.

 

KOBANÊ CASE

 

A decision was to be made in the Kobanê Conspiracy Case, but it was postponed. We expect the decision hearing to be held on May 16. The whole world and the Turkish public know that the Kobanê Conspiracy Case is the product of ISIS's reflection in Sincan. The Kobanê resistance was a resistance that raised hopes in the Middle East and throughout the world that ISIS could be defeated and degraded, an abusive, rapist and massacred organization. ISIS was defeated in Kobanê, and this was very important not only for Syria, Northern and Eastern Syria, but also for the whole world. More than 100 Russian citizens lost their lives in the recent massacre in Russia. We know about the massacre committed in Turkey. While the Kobanê resistance is appreciated all over the world today, we do not accept and will not accept hundreds of folders of unfounded criminal allegations made by the AKP government in Turkey, citing a tweet. In this hearing, which our friends have been holding for years, and with the understanding that judges the judiciary they have put forward, they explained as a lesson how the women's libertarian and democratic understanding should emerge, against the male-dominated mentality, against the ISIS mentality, and how democracy can be established.

 

GULTAN KISANAK

 

Gültan Kışanak's detention continues. Although her 7-year detention period has expired according to the law, she is still being held prison there unnecessarily for 6 months. As our Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Co-Mayor candidate, we ran a strong campaign together with women. Regardless of the results, the messages Turkey needed were given by women in this campaign. These messages, as dear Gültan Kışanak summarized, are the message from Diyarbakır to Ankara that we demand a common life. It was the message of moving women's politics to the center. We would like to thank the women who worked day and night. I convey our love to all the women held captive in the Kobanê conspiracy case, in the person of our dear Gültan Kışanak, and to all our friends and all the women held as political prisoners.”

 

WE WANT PEACE

 

This morning, Israel bombed and fired missiles at Iran. All women in Turkey, Kurdistan and the region stood against this chaos that was wanted to be created around the war, in this period when the Middle East and North America were dragged into war in these tensions that have been going on for a while. And today the region is about to be dragged into a very serious, major war.

 

The region has two main bleeding wounds. One is the Kurdish issue and the other is the Palestinian issue. The Kurdish and Palestinian issues are issues that must be solved within the framework of the people's right to self-determination. Unless these problems are solved, wars will continue to cluster around them.

 

We will build honorable peace and common life together against the policies of isolation, violence and war. Together, we will grow our women's struggle against male state violence that escalates femicide. We will continue to be the voice of Emin Şenyaşar's search for justice. We will fight for the release of 75-year-old prisoner Hatice Yıldız, who was taken to prison on a stretcher, and all ill prisoners. We will continue our struggle to bring our friends who were taken hostage to a free future because they resisted the policies of oppression, saying co-chairship and equal representation are our purple line. We will further organize women's organizations against femicides, violence and massacres against women. We will strive to ensure the success of the women's rebellion against women's poverty and unemployment. We will say no to a constitutional regulation that does not include a woman's name. We will fight to make a democratic constitution."