Ata on Kobanê Trial: Autonomous Kurdistan is indispensable

The 10th hearing of the Kobanê Trial, in which 108 people stand trial, 22 of whom are jailed, is continuing on the 4th day in the Sincan Prison Campus, Ankara.

HDP’s former MP and TJA activist Ayla Akat Ata made a defence during the hearing on Friday.

Ata emphasized that party closures, arrests and other tools of pressure would not stop her party’s activities. “We will continue our struggle. In particular, women’s struggle is not a new thing. We have been fighting for millennia. Our women’s activities are criminalized as part of a state policy. There is an attempt to influence the case in accordance with political interests. They also want to bottleneck the women’s struggle. I stand behind all my activities related to women’s struggle. The Free Women’s Congress (KJA) was also targeted like our other institutions. We just said ‘nekuje’ (don’t kill). We didn’t say anything else. But what happened afterwards? Those who promoted peace were arrested,” she said.

‘THIS TRIAL TARGETS BOTH KURDS AND WOMEN’

“During the KCK operations, we saw how 30-40 HDP politicians were detained each month, but what happened then? Our party is still standing strong. Thousands of operations were carried out against women, yet women are still standing strong. What are we going to do, are we going to renounce our cause? According to Ulaş’s statement, I knew some people and had contact with all the members of the organization. What kind of organization is this, that has not been defeated for 40 years, and in which everybody knows every single person?” the woman politician said.

“The state knows that women are ready to pay the price. There are more female prisoners than males in this case. This trial is not just a case against the Kurds and the HDP. It is a trial against women,” she noted.

“All the press releases in the file are taken from the press. You should request the full texts from the security forces. Things can be better understood by reading the full texts. The phrase ‘so-called news’ was used in the file. All my statements are newsworthy. A banner that read “We are in favour of life, not death”, which was displayed during a press statement, is cited as evidence in my file. Is it a crime to be in favour of life? In the statement, I said “Kurdistan is part of this country”. This remark is used to claim that I want the establishment of Kurdistan. However, I was talking about a historical fact there, not a country’s territory. I could have said it if I wanted a separate Kurdistan, but I believe that an Autonomous Democratic Kurdistan is indispensable for a democratic Turkey,” the TJA activist concluded.