Numerous women's associations from Turkey are protesting against the latest wave of repression against the Kurdish women's movement in Amed (Diyarbakir). On Tuesday morning dozens of women were arrested in the Kurdish metropolis, among them Ayşe Gökkan, spokeswoman of the TJA (Tevgera Jinên Azad / Movement of Free Women), journalist Ayşe Güney, seventy-year-old peace mother Hayriye Demir and Elif Haran, co-chair of the prisoners' aid organisation MED TUHAD-FED.

The joint statement of the women's associations says: "The misogynistic policy of the men's alliance AKP and MHP is taking on greater dimensions every day. In this country, we wake up every morning with the news that apartments of Kurds, women and opposition members have been stormed by the police. This morning, a political campaign of annihilation has taken place again.

"No power can break our resistance"

"The women arrested are our friends who have been fighting for years under the umbrella of the TJA for women's liberation and who have been promoting women in politics, in the media and in trade unions. We know that this attack on the Kurdish women's movement is not the first attack, as we know from numerous other friends who are being held in prison as political hostages. Whenever the male alliance AKP/MHP is in distress, it attacks the free will of women. We women know that the arrests and detentions are aimed at suppressing our struggle and intimidating us. When we set out to fight patriarchy, we already knew that we would meet men who do not have a free will and who disregard us. But what the other side has obviously not yet learned is that no power can break our resistance. If the AKP assumes that it can intimidate us with its campaign of annihilation, it is mistaken.

Against the oppressive policy of the AKP and its partner MHP, which aims to educate society to obedience, we women have taken our hope into our own hands and set out to present it to society. And this is exactly what frightens the rulers the most: the determination to fight, which arises under the leadership of women.

AKP and MHP insist on their misogynistic policy. They should know that we women will continue to be on the streets against the rejection of the Istanbul Convention, against the legitimisation of child abuse through marriage, against trustees and against the enforcement law. We will never, not even for a moment, retreat from our liberation struggle against the aggressive, fascist, militarist, sexist and patriarchal AKP policy.

We say it again: the struggle of the arrested women is also our struggle. We will not bend, and we will never obey. We exist and we are here. We demand the immediate release of our unlawfully detained friends."

The undersigned

The statement was jointly drafted by the women's organisations of HDP, HDK, DBP, DTK, SYKP, Women's Liberation (Kadınların Kurtuluşu), Socialist Solidarity Platform, Socialist Women's Councils and Green-Red Women.

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