JINHA

ISTANBUL – HDP co-chair FigenYüksekdağ, announcing the party's election campaign manifesto yesterday at a press conference in Istanbul, said that the HDPisaimingto change Turkey's sexist and discriminatory system with their policies.

The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is stepping up its campaign for Turkey's June 7 election. The left opposition party aims to institute a number of concrete projects to answer the needs of oppressed ethnic and linguistic groups, women, LGBTQI people, people with disabilities, workers and the environment.

HDP Co-Chair FigenYüksekdağshares the chairship of the party with SelahattinDemirtaş, as part of the party's gender parity system, in which party positions and offices are shared by a man and a woman.Figen, speaking at Istanbul's Mustafa Kemal Culture Center yesterday, said that the party wants to bring agender parity co-prime minister system to Turkey. The party is vowing to pursue a positive discrimination policy for gender until Turkey institutes a gender quota.The HDP is running a slate of 48% women candidates for the Parliamentary election.

"We're women, we're 50% and we're going to bring equality to life," said Figen. She announced the party's intention to institution meaningful punishment for violence against women. The ruling AKP government has drawn women's ire for a system of "sentence reductions" for crimes of violence against women that ensure high levels of impunity for perpetrators of femicide, rape and domestic violence.

The party's LGBTQI policy calls for equal citizenship rights for LGBTQI people through social equality policies in the fields of education, employment, and housing and policies to end the wave of murders of trans people. The party is also proposing gender education to end sexist and gendered discrimination.

Explaining the party's goal of founding a Ministry of Women to replace the current Ministry of Family and Social Policies, Figensaid that the current system "imprisons women in the family, does not see women as individuals, ignores and supports violence and discrimination against women." The Ministry of Women, she said, would be a "radical and powerful move for freedom" for women. The ministry would work to ensure equality in the workforce, to recognize domestic labor and provide free childcare, and to punish perpetrators of anti-women violence.

"We're struggling for a Turkey where we aren't forced to wash all the world's dirty laundry, clean all the world's dishes, feed everyone with the food we make—a Turkey that we have liberated," she said.Figen referenced the struggle of women in Rojava to build their revolution, saying it provided an answer to anyone who questioned how women would succeed in this project.

The party is also promising to make March 8, International Working Women's Day, a national holiday, in a state that recognizes no holiday dedicated to women.

"This manifesto is the mirror of our years of accumulated struggle and values," said Figen. "It was the oppressed people, the workers on strike, the students struggling on campus, the LGBTI people fighting for equal citizenship in every area of life who wrote this manifesto."

The co-chair noted that dominant forces in Turkey have long attempted to restrict the diverse peoples of Turkey and to squash their fight for freedom, but that "with the manifesto we are presenting today, we want to formalize all Turkey's imagination, resolve in its demands, and power to succeed."

(gc/fk/cm)