We, the women, are in Taksim in Istanbul on the 8th of March!
We are, as the women who live in Turkey, shouting our voice on the streets for eleven years, calling out against patriarchy, against men’s violence, sexism, heterosexism, capitalism, militarism and war; at the night marches of 8th of March.
Since the last 8th of March, it has been a year which has passed with an increasing violence against woman.
Everyday, we are reading another femicide on the news. Everyday three women are killed in Turkey. The murderers and the rapists receive no punishment. The state is not trying to stop the violence against woman, but try to stop the divorcements.
AKP; which is the government, the legislative and the jurisdiction power at the same time, has taken our right of abortion. We are sent away from the doors of the public hospitals. It has been limited to reach the contraceptive methods. The government doesn’t hesitate to step forward in
order to control the women’s body. They are preparing the laws which are going to condemn us to flexible and unsecured work life. Women’s shelter and woman information centers are very symbolic in number and insufficient in Turkey. Removing the Ministry of Woman, the government formed the Ministry of Family and Social Politics which protects the family and the new politics; besides forcing the women to be obliged to the family.
We as the women who were on the streets in Gezi Resistance, we challenged to the sexist politics of the state. We come across with violence andsexual harassment of the police while resisting.
This was not the first time, the women faced with police violence on the 8th of March celebrations of 2005 in Beyazıt. The Turkish state has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights because of the police violence.
In Istanbul; Taksim, where we go on resisting to these police violence and to all these preventions and where we go on existing, repeating ” we are not leaving these streets and nights”, is now under police blockade. On these streets where we call out to the world for 11 years, today we are faced with the threat of the police violence, harassment and tear gas.
The oppression is increasingly going on but we don’t give up resisting and revolting against patriarchy! As we have been for the last 11 years, we are going to be in Taksim on the 8th of March for our night march.
AKP government, which is attacking to all fields of our life, is trying to take our streets that we walk on. But despite all of the prohibitions we are meeting in Taksim and shouting our voice.
We are calling the women from all around the world, to call out for the freedom of women, to call out against the possible police violence and for solidarity; even though they can not be with us Taksim, We are going to pass the police barricades together, in Taksim.
Let the father come, Let the husband come, Let the police come, Let the nightstick come!
Deliberately on revolt! Deliberately on revolt! Deliberately freedom!
Istanbul Feminist Collective
