Öykü Dilara Keskin- Rozerin Tekin / JINHA

ISTANBUL – Women in the people's parliament of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) are covering up their faces in the streets and on social media in an action reacting to recently adopted laws making covering one's face a crime, among other legal articles widely perceived as criminalizing Kurds, women and other marginalized groups.

Discussions of the Internal Security Law in Parliamentwere contentious, with AKP MPs physically assaultingprimarily female HDP MPs who stood in opposition to the law. HDP MPs, speaking on the assault, said it demonstrated the way dominant powersare particularly enraged by women's voices.

AKP and other parties illegally pushed the first 10 articles through Parliamenton February 22. 16 articles have now passed. New laws empower the police to conduct searches without a court order, among other things.

An article making it illegal to carry pepper spray hasprovoked outrage by criminalizing women's self-defense at a time when violence against women is skyrocketing, unopposed by the dominant party.

GülsümKav, general representative for theplatform "We Will Stop Women Homicides," said thatthe MPs' assault on the female parliamentarians had already shown Turkey what security laws meant for women. New articles would give police the power to kill those who spoke out, she said.

"Women were attacked in Parliament. Now the internal security law turns the blows in Parliament into guns."

ÖzgecanAslan, the university student who tried to defend herself from her rapists and murderers with pepper spray, "did everything in her power to protect herself," said Gülsüm."But the government has done nothing to make her campus a safer place. If they want security, why not prioritize dangerous places?"

"This law makes the police state a permanent reality," said HülyaAvşar, Istanbul coordinator for the Congress of Free Women (KJA). She also referred to the law as an attack on the efforts for peace being led by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK.

"This is actually a declaration of war against our freedoms and especially against the peace process, which Mr. Öcalan has been the one to insist on."

Hülya said the HDP MPs had shown immense and honorable resistance with actions like sit-ins in Parliament, but that now more resistance is necessary.

"These articles were passed illegally, without discussion. This is unacceptable. It's a preparation for elections by the 12-year ruling party," she said, referring to the AKP. "The only solution to AKP hegemony is for all peoples to come together and take joint action." She said the HDP was "the only force that can stop" the AKP in the coming election.

For many, articles that criminalize regional ethnic dress recall the 1990s, in which large parts of Northern Kurdistan were under the OHAL state of emergency laws.

"Is my mother going to be arrested tomorrow for wearing green, yellow and red?" asked NeslihanGüner of the KJA Istanbul coordinating body, referring to the colors of traditional Kurdish dress. "We are the children of the OHAL period. It was a period of torture, executions without trial, disappearances and arrests." For her generation, Neslihan said, the new powers being given to law enforcement were a flashback to OHAL.

While a law targeting Kurds and women has been aggressively and illegally pushed through Parliament, noted Neslihan, the dominant party has shown no effort to pass any law targeting perpetrators of the increasing wave of violence against women.

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