Zehra Doğan/JINHA

AMED – In the city of Diyarbakır, women of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) have organized themselves throughout the city with an election campaign strategy rarely seen from Turkey's mainstream parties: women's election bureaus. JINHA spent a day in the routine of the grassroots women's campaign to overcome Turkey's ruling AKP.

In the women's elections bureau in the neighborhood of Bağlar, the day starts with a strong cup of the ubiquitous smuggled tea that comes across the border from other parts of Kurdistan, local women's earth oven-baked bread and yogurt. Hediye Korhan is the volunteer on duty today, but she seems to have barely a moment to spare to speak with us. "From morning until evening, no one here stops," she explains. Seeing that the women hardly have time to eat breakfast, let alone give us an interview, we finish our tea and head for the neighborhood of Seyrantepe.

Women survivors of war rally behind the HDP

A child meets us at the entrance to a street of low-roofed houses in the largely migrant-populated neighborhood of Seyrantape. As soon as he learns of our destination, he walks us to the women's elections HQ, but it would be hard to miss. A smiling woman named Zekiye Yılmaz greets us at the entrance to the tiny elections HQ, hung with rows of colorful HDP flags out of all proportion to its size.

"Welcome to the palace of hearts we've built against Tayyip's palace," says Zekiye, referencing the extravagant presidential residence that AKP President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has had built for himself in Ankara, whose construction never seems to end. A crowd of laughing neighborhood children gathers in the street, curious about our presence here.

Five people would be hard-pressed to find a place to sit in the barely six square meters of the elections HQ, but we find ourselves in the middle of the laughter and conversation of no less than 15 women, squeezed into plastic lawn chairs with their children on their laps. The bureau is an all-women space. Nearly every woman here has a story of being forced to leave her village during the Turkish state's attack on Kurdish civilians in the 1990s. 73-year-old Emine Keskin, forced to leave her village in the Derik area of Mardin province years ago, touches her traditional facial tattoo.

"Ah, this state, this state; they tore my life down," she says. After the state burned her village, Emine and her family fled. Both her husband and her children were killed in those years of war. "Now who do you think I can vote for?"

50-year-old Kıymet Çoreşoğlu has a similar story behind her commitment to the HDP, whose platform calls for justice for villagers displaced by the Turkish army's policy of village destruction.

Zekiye says they chose this tiny store for a strategic reason. Half of those on the street are relatives of local AKP candidate Salih Ensarioğlu, and others are members of the right-wing Islamic party Hüda-Par. She says the local sheikhs, at the behest of the Ensarioğlu family, have made the rounds in the houses, pressuring women to take a religious oath to vote for the AKP and not the HDP. One woman came to the elections office saying she had changed her mind, but would never break an oath. She promised Zekiye, however, that her children who were under no such obligation would be casting their votes for the HDP.

As the women start bringing carpets to spread on the street to accommodate the volunteers for their evening meeting (there's no way they will fit in the tiny office), we take this as our cue to go. As the children dance traditional Kurdish line dances in the street to the sound of the HDP campaign songs blasting from a speaker on the ground, we head out for our next stop: the women's election bureau in the downtown Diyarbakır district of Yenişehir.

Soldiers and youth won't vote for aggression anymore

Volunteer Leyla Elefroz Baran explains that most of the residents in the middle-class neighborhood are either families of soldiers, police and state officials or students. A young woman, Dilan Nergiz, says the AKP's gestures to war have students and youth like her worried in Turkey. "I'm here; I'm standing up for my future," she says.

The other segment of the population here—police and military families—are hardly people who would be expected to vote for the left-wing HDP. In the last election, pro-AKP police were holding celebrations in the streets with drums and pipes before the polls were even closed. "That really made us mad," said Leyla. However, in their most recent polls and door-to-door work, Leyla and the other Yenişehir volunteers have found that the HDP's vote percentage is now at 70%. The HDP's staunchly pro-peace process policy may be behind the 20% rise.

"A lot of the soldiers we talked to are sick of this order and they say they'll vote for the HDP," said Leyla, who said the soldiers have said they can't live with the anxiety of a "schizophrenic AKP" in charge of the future of the peace process.

A few young men are sitting at the corner table that functions as the command center, but they have the air of supporting players in the women's elections work. After the survey, the next step will be going door-to-door to talk to neighborhood residents about the HDP candidates. Baran Gümüş, a male student here, says he's a mere foot soldier. "Whatever the women say, goes," he says, laughing.

From elections office to women's solidarity center

At our final stop, the Suriçi Women's Election Office, you won't find a single man. This, like the Seyrantepe office, is an all-women space. Evening is falling on the ancient basalt city walls that face the office, located in the oldest district of Diyarbakır. Inside, we find ourselves in the middle of a group of women debating what to do for a young woman experiencing violence, who has ended up here in the elections office seeking a solution.

HDP volunteer Güneş Sönemez peels off from the intense discussion for a few minutes to answer our questions. She says the presence of the first-ever all-women's election bureau has given the neighborhood, perhaps even more than a campaign nerve center, an impromptu women's center.

"Just yesterday, a woman was beaten up for making a victory sign," says Güneş, referring to a symbol often associated with the Kurdish movement. "It was hard to get her away from them. The domestic violence and local factors here are very difficult. There have been women here who first learned that there was a struggle against violence [against women] thanks to this office. Every day, dozens of women come to use asking for our solidarity as they try to stop violence against women."

Women say they will continue working in these women-led elections offices from nine in the morning until 10 at night until the election on June 7th. That will doubtless be a long night for the many women who hope to wake up on June 8th to hear that their work has not been for nothing.

(fk/cm)