JINHA

BEHDINAN–In an interview with Firat News Agency, ZılarSterk of the PAJK coordination committee said the murder ofÖzgecanAslan in Mersin showed masculinity at its most fascist. Women's organizing, she says, is the way out.

The attack against ÖzgecanAslanand the fascist attacks of Daesh both representthe same patriarchal ideology, explained Zılar, an ideology that has made itself permanent in the state form and become part of culture on a world scale.Rape is not an attack on individuals, she said, but on women as a whole. "What is under attack by rape culture and by masculinity's everyday acts of terror is actually the root culture of society," in which women are a generative force.

Commenting on Turkish President Erdoğan's remark that women are "entrusted" to men, Zılar called it an instance of the widespread mindset that sees women as property.Calling this kind of thinking a "crime that hasn't yet been executed," Zılar pointed out the absurdity of debating the punishment for those who physically carry out crimes against women without acknowledging the "mental crimes" underlying them.

"Even punishment won't bring back the victims, unfortunately," she said.What was moreurgent, she said, was reforming the education system—from sexist primary school fables on up.

Another priority was justice for women, by women.Zılar explained that the philosophy of free, democratic society aims to createself-governing communities. "From this perspective women—the generative and developmental forces in society, the mothers who give birth, the leaders—they need to be the ones who decide the punishment for the crimes against them," said Zılar.

"Why not have special courts of women?" she argued, saying the state and its male-run courts could not make these kinds of decisions.

She pointed to women's organizing as a source of ideas for such changes.

"Now is the time for a strong women's movement in Turkey, drawing on the experience of women in Kurdistan," she said. Organizing opens the way for individual women isolated by patriarchal society to combine their efforts. Women's self-defense is one part of this, she said, because ultimately "no man has the power to defend women from fates like Özgecan's," whether with a weapon or in court.

"Until rape cultureis destroyed through a social cultural revolution, this fascist mindset and the everyday practice of rape will not end," she said.

(mg/cm)