Ceren Karlıdağ/JINHA

İSTANBUL – When Duygu Kasakolu was detained in Istanbul in 2013, she was sexually tortured while blindfolded in the police vehicle. Duygu told the story of how she survived the torture: by remembering the struggle of her childhood heroine Sakine Cansız, the Kurdish woman politician assassinated three years ago tomorrow.

According to a report on state-perpetrated sexual torture by Turkey’s Legal Aid Bureau Against Harrassment and Rape under Arrest, between the years of 1997 and 2013, 393 women have applied for help related to sexual harassment under arrest in the country. Commenting on the recent rise in sexual torture in Turkey, police sexual torture survivor Duygu Kasakolu called for women everywhere to report their stories without shame and struggle against these attacks.

What gave Duygu strength, she said, was the uncompromising struggle of Sakine Cansız. Sakine Cansız, nom de guerre Sara, was among the founders of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). While jailed in notorious torture center Diyarbakır Prison in the wake of Turkey’s 1980 coup, she famously survived and resisted sexual torture. Sakine Cansız was assassinated three years ago tomorrow in Paris, along with Leyla Şaylemez and Fidan Doğan.

For Duygu, Sakine’s “life of fighting” (as the title of her autobiography put it) inspired her own resistance against sexual torture. Duygu first encountered harassment from police at Karabük University, where local police often harassed Kurdish women students. While she was staying in a dormitory, police often made threatening remarks, telling her and other women students that they “had her number.” In the same period, a man began sexually harassing Duygu. She knew that even if she complained to police, nothing would change, so she had to move to Istanbul.

At a 2013 protest, Duygu was struck in the head with an unknown projectile and then arrested while trying to help a friend wounded by police. She was put into a vehicle with two other people. “They took me to a dark, closed place. There’s one sentence I remember very clearly: ‘We’ve handled a lot of Alevi and Kurdish women like you. We’ll handle you too, and you’ll like it.’” One policeman, angered when Duygu broke into hysterical laughter, cut her breasts with a knife, saying, “This scar is so I’ll always be able to find you again.”

“When they did this, Sakine Cansız came into my head. Comrade Sara was tortured in the Diyarbakır prison by guards cutting off her breast. But she wasn’t intimidated, and she continued to struggle,” said Duygu. “Even if I couldn’t do as much as her, I needed to not be undone by this torture; I needed to resist.”

Sakine Cansız was a childhood hero of Duygu’s. After she was released in atrocious physical condition, she says that Sakine Cansız’ resistance gave her the courage to report the police who harassed her. However, her struggle was largely fruitless, as she could not remember any exact details from the attack, in which she was blindfolded.

“In spite of them, I continue to be out there on the streets,” said Duygu. “Recently, there’s been a big rise in sexual torture. Women need to not be ashamed. These disgusting things they’ve experienced are not because of them.” She called on women to continue their struggle in the face of harassment.

(fk/cm)