۸ مارس

To all women fighters in Turkey: your struggle is our struggle:

We closely follow your inspiring uprising against AKP regime every night. As you challenge the running dog of this anti-woman regime, our hearts beat with happiness and at the same time with the worries.

We are convinced that the women in Turkey do not and will not tolerate this regime. Everybody knows that in the last ten years from the time that the AKP has been ruling Turkey, the number of women who have been killed by men has increased 14 times. AKP and its American sponsored have done everything to portray it as a regime that has been able to satisfy the majority of the people in Turkey by combining “democracy” with “moderate Islam”. The people’s uprising in Turkey has put an end to this myth and showed how deceitful it is. What Erdogan’s “democracy” has meant for women in Turkey is to use Islamic hejab in work places and in the universities and his “moderate Islam” has meant to trample the most basic rights of women’s such as right to abortion and gradual enforcement of religious morality in Turkey.

You are aware that since 1979 an Islamic regime under Khomeini leadership has been ruling in Iran. But many of you might not know that this dark minded oppressor and suppressor force has had nothing less than Shah’s regime (the dictator who ruled the Iran before Islamic regime seize the power in Iran in February 1979) to oppress and exploit the people in Iran and even more than Shah’s regime has integrated the economy of the country into the network of imperialists world capital and has made it more dependent to that. Islamic regime in Iran has claimed that is an anti-imperialist’s regime but its “anti-imperialism” has proved to be an ugly and reactionary phenomena that was expressed in enforcing Islamic hejab and Sharia law on women and creating a religious state.

Tayeb Erdogan’s regime is no different in nature from other Turkey’s Kemalist regim, however by its Islam-isation of the he has intensified all oppressive and exploitive character of the state (in which the control of body and mind of women is at its centre)

Last year in June Erdogan gave a speech against abortion and Caesarean, he also spoke hostile against women who don’t want any child or who want fewer children. He said abortion is against the women’s value in the Turkish society and for Turkey to achieve the glory of its ‘past’ the women’s traditional role should be consolidated. He said what is all about a woman is being a mother otherwise there is nothing sacred about her. He meant under his rule women without being a mother has no social value. He added that the women who don’t reproduce are collaborating with the enemies of Turkey and every woman should give birth to 3 children. With this speech he made it clear that he has attempted to plan for and control the women’s lives completely. He also changed the name of Ministry of women and family to the “Ministry of family and social policies”. Ankara’s Mayor in a television speech followed his boss and insulted women, he said that women who want to abort their foetus is better to committee suicide, because their lives worth less than the foetus. The Grand Imam of Turkey, Mehmet Gormez said that women have no rights on their own body because they are only a pipe created by god to produce children. (Hurriyet, 4 th June 2012).

Intensification of patriarchal and male chauvinism is an international phenomenon. Capitalism needs it in all quarters of the world. Intensification of anti-woman-ism in the Middle East is provided through establishment of Islamic rule which dependent on world capitalist system. Therefore the spread of Islamism and anti-woman-ism and rapid developments of capitalist globalisation are part and parcel of the same necessity. In front of such all rounded assaults, women in the Middle East and the world must form the revolutionary and Internationalist movement, a movement where the emancipation of women is one of its immediate aims. One of the most important realities of our time is that the movement for the emancipation of women can play a huge role in revolutionary changes of different society and all the world. It must do so, because humanity urgently needs it.

We have seen a glimpse of this reality in street battles in Turkey, we hope that this resistances and struggles could turn into a movement for revolution, for the overthrow of old social order and establishment of a new society, with new social relations where the liberation of women as its shining path.

We are certain that revolutionary women in Turkey will challenge the Erdogan’s regime because of its anti-woman-ism, reactionary interventions in Syria, murdering PKK women’s activists in Paris and their dirty plans regarding Kurdish questions, rapid expansion of neo liberalist capitalism and the destruction of ecology. Revolutionary women will settle the account against these huge crimes committed by the Turkish regime.

Break the chains, Bring into motion women’s force, like a roaring river for making revolution!

Long Live international Solidarity of Women in the Middle East and the world!

No to Islamic Republic and no to imperialist’s intervention in Iran!

No to AKP –ism, No to Kemal-ism in Turkey!

11June 2013

8 March Women’s organisation (Iran- Afghanistan)