JINHA

NEWS CENTER – Actions for Özgecan continued yesterday with thousands of women across Turkey taking to the streets.Common across protests was protest at the ruling AKP's anti-woman statements, ranging from Erdoğan's remark "I don't believe in women's equality," to AKP MP Ayhan Sefer Üstün's statement that "the rapist is more innocent than the rape victim who gets an abortion." Protestors denounced the systematic violence against women represented by the murder.

University students made their voices heard on campuses across Turkey. At Mardin Artuklu University, students gathered on campus calling for immediate action to stop the wave of murders of women. At Antalya Akdeniz University, students gathered in front of the Yakut Shopping Arcade on campus to hold a theatrical performance about violence against women.

Protest were widespread in the cities and towns of Northern Kurdistan. In Van, women denounced the skyrocketing rate of femicides, which has risen 1400 percent over the last 12 years in Turkey.In Erciṣ  in the same province, protestors from a range of parties and groups held a march, bearing photographs of the three Kurdish militant women slainin Paris, Sakine Cansız, Leyla Saylemez and Fidan Doğan, alongside those of women slain in Erciş Sevda Kaya, Büşra Çiftçi and Melek Gezer.

Thousands gathered in Colemêrg (Hakkari) for a march organized by Bineyş Women's Center. Citizens expressed their support for the protestors by hanging black flags of mourning from their balconies.Women also marched in the town of Yüksekova in the same province, and inSiirt.

In Doğubayazıt, women marched in the streets, with lawyers from the local Bar Association decrying the sexist laws that enabled Özgecan's murder. Citizens and representatives from the new platform "Women of Labor and Democracy ," as well as the HDP and Democratic Regions Party (BDP), gathered in Muş to condemn the murder.

(ekip/gk/fk/cm)