Throughout the 16-year ruling of the AKP government, women's policies have been one of the most controversial and contested issues the women's movements had to deal with.

The AKP government ruling has been characterised by a humiliating, hateful and ignorant discourse on women, and women's rights have been eroded almost on a daily basis.

Women's organisations think that this approach cannot be analysed separately from the male-dominated mentality.

Tevgera Jinên Azad (TJA) - Free Women Movement activist Mekiye Ormanci talked to ANF about the women's policies and approaches of the AKP government.

AKP hopes to revive the Ottoman times

"This was a period in which the rhetoric on issues such as human rights, women's rights and democracy was intensively worked on. - said Ormanci - For a time, the rulers have deviated people’s attention from them in order to gain time and install themselves properly. This process certainly should not be analysed separately from the old Ottoman politics.”

In fact, said Ormanci, reviving the Ottoman times is “their biggest dream. They want to carry the feudal mentality of the 19th century to today. Of course, there are women in this world of theirs. But the status of the woman we look at in their minds is only the mother.”

Ormanci reminded of recent comments by the promoters of such a mentality who said: “Women do not mean anything more than a mother in our philosophy of life and in our system. You cannot have a life other than that of a mother.”

Much more than mothers

Ormanci added: ”We are not addressing these policies and approaches in a separate way from the feminist movement and the 40-year struggle of Kurdish women.”

The AKP government has an approach that condemns women to the home, insisted Ormanci, saying: “They call the mother the most valuable of women. We consider this as an attack on gains. This is the reality. We are facing a bullying approach.”

Ormanci said: “When we look back, we see that the movements of the 20th century have had challenges. They got results on legal basis, within the framework of women's rights. Again, great struggles have been fought and women under the name of modern society have been able to work in the public arena.”

Women’s struggle to defeat the male mentality

Underlining that the transformation of the male dominant mind can only be achieved through the struggle that women have been fighting, Ormanci emphasised the following: "Maybe it is possible to relax society by acting within the legal framework, but what we are constantly saying is that this alone will not be a solution. There is a male mentality and life has been built following this rule.”

In this life, said Ormanci “women are only servants and slaves. We think of a women’s revolution against this male mind. This revolution has many legs. One of these is politics. We do not argue that politics is everything. But we use politics both as a legal and political base as a line. Because politics and law act in coordination with one another."

Fight to end isolation imposed on Abdullah Öcalan

Referring to the isolation regime imposed on Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan, Ormancı concluded by saying that the international conspiracy is also part of the equation.

"The isolation policy is the second step of the international conspiracy. We see that the state system carrying out a 5,000-year-old male mentality is actually clogged. The system also saw that the democratic nation perspective would overcome the single nation perspective and the Middle East would be redefined. If a new life is to be found in the Middle East, this of course would be a danger to both the European and US communities, for this reason, they initiated the second phase of the conspiracy”.