Cahide Harputlu/JINHA

KOBANÊ –Marxist women fighters from Turkey have called for all women to make 2015 the year of women.The women,who have fought alongside their Kurdish comrades to defend Kobanê and are now working in there construction, sent their greetings for March 8, International Working Women's Day, to all the oppressed women and LGBTQI people in the world.

"Seeing 14, 15-year-old girls coming here wanting to defend their homeland affects you like you can't believe," said Ulrike Barbara of TİKKO (Liberation Army of the Workers and Peasants of Turkey). "I've been here for two months but I really regret not coming earlier."

Ulrike had long been interested in women's issues while she was in Turkey. She stressed the intimate link between the violence against women and minorities in Turkey and the attacks of rapist Daesh gangs against Kurdish women, carried out with the logistical support of the Turkish government.

Roza Kutlu of the MLKP(Marxist-Leninist Communist Party) said the Kobanê martyrdom of Sarya Özgür, afellow MLKP fighter, was one of the factors that moved her to come here, but that Kurdish women fighters and martyrs had long been an inspiration for her. Now Arîn Mîrxan, the martyr who sacrificed herself to liberate the city, had become an inspiration for her and all her comrades.

"The resistance led by the YPJ here has been an example to us all," said Rezzan Işık of the MLKP. "Women walk the streets with confidence here, with guns in their hands. They've made the heroic sacrifices on the front lines—women like Arîn Mîrxan, Sarya Özgür and Kader Ortakaya."

She said these martyrs in the Kobanê resistance, giving their all against the rapist Daesh gang members, inspired her to fight for and defend herself. Now she has come here hoping to take part in the reconstruction process, saying she wanted to help build a woman's city on the site where so many women gave their lives for freedom.

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