The Women’s Assembly of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) released the final report of the “Women’s Liberation Ideology” workshops, prepared with the participation of DBP Co-Chair Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar. Speaking in a garden in the Kirimqeya neighbourhood of Karaçoban (Qereçoban) in Erzurum (Erzirom), Uçar said they were raising their voices from Erzurum to strengthen the philosophy of “Jin, jiyan, azadî” (Woman, life, freedom) through the workshops they organized.
Uçar began her remarks by commemorating Berivan Kutlu, an activist of the Free Women’s Movement (Tevgera Jin Azad – TJA) and former Co-Mayor of Cizre (Cizîr), who passed away last night. She said, “We lost our friend Berivan Kutlu yesterday, a woman with whom we shared years of struggle. She made immense contributions both to the struggle of her own people and to the freedom struggle of Kurdish women. We will not forget her.”
Uçar emphasized that 25 November is a significant date for women and continued:
“For us, this date is one of the major milestones of women’s struggle. What a woman experiences in Erzurum is also experienced by a woman in Istanbul; what happens here also happens in Europe and Africa. We see women’s oppression as universal, and we believe it requires a collective, global struggle. Women in this country face both physical and psychological violence, many are fighting simply for the right to live. One in three women in Turkey experiences violence. And the perpetrator is not far away; the perpetrators stand right beside us. While we fight gender inequality, the AKP government has declared the past ten years as the ‘decade of the family,’ confining women to an invisible place within the home. Yes, the freedom of women can begin within the family, but it must be guaranteed through legal frameworks. There is a mindset that has seeped into the capillaries of society, a system that insists it can define the limits of a woman’s life. This year, as the Women’s Assembly, we decided to hold workshops everywhere to discuss women’s liberation. We met thousands of women in dozens of cities. What we are talking about is rooted in Abdullah Öcalan’s 1998 perspective on women’s freedom.
According to this perspective, the first principle is patriotism. Patriotism is the first principle because defending women’s freedom is inseparable from defending one’s land and geography. The second principle is free will and free thought for women. In the Neolithic era, life was created through the hands of women, yet in time their existence was taken away from them, and systems of state power were built. Within these systems, women had no name. We invite our male friends to join us in building a free society. The third principle is organization. For even the simplest issues, women historically had no voice. But once women organized in villages and neighbourhoods, their voices gained meaning and strength. One of the things the state has feared most is women’s organizing, because we organized for our freedom and the state tried to suppress this. The fourth principle is struggle. Women are the strongest carriers of this principle; every effort we put forth is part of the struggle. What matters is that this struggle becomes a voice that opens the path to women’s freedom. The final principle is ethics and aesthetics. All of society’s values are built upon ethics, on collective decisions that shape shared life. Today’s system, under the guise of aesthetics, pushes us toward a place where women’s physical appearance is prioritized, while their spirit, thought and labor are pushed aside. For us, ethics means the will to live together; it means embracing all the values created by women.
This date is profoundly meaningful. This call itself shows that the century-long system of denial and assimilation has failed. When we began our workshops, we did so under the slogan ‘from the free woman to the democratic society.’ With each woman’s effort, labour and ideas, we can claim this process and help it grow. Yesterday in Van (Wan), women opened an exhibition titled ‘women who keep history alive.’ The photographs depicted Kurdish women who played critical roles and achieved important gains in the Kurdish women’s freedom struggle. The state raided the exhibition simply because those photographs were there. But we know the women there will hold that exhibition again. This is the reality we face. What we fear is not male domination; our struggle is to ensure that not even a single woman suffers the slightest harm.”
The statement concluded with the chant “Jin, jiyan, azadî.”