'The more you kill, the more Kurdish women will resist'

11:19

JINHA

AMED - Çağlar Demirel, a representative of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey's Parliament, has been observing police and military attacks in the Kurdish towns of Silvan and Lice. Çağlar said that attacks will only increase resistance.

"I'm speaking as someone who lived through the 90s," said Çağlar, referring to the years of intensive dirty war by the Turkish state against Kurdish civilians. "We're talking about something different from the 1990s. In the 90s, there were unknown killers; they shot and ran. Today, we're not talking about a state of law. We're talking about a police and military state." She said that war has now been declared on civilians.

"In Kurdistan, the state is the police. It's the military. Now there's been a state of total war declared in Kurdistan. It started in Silopi, it continued in Cizre and Şırnak. We saw it in Diyadin, in Nusaybin. And in Şemdinli and Yüksekova, we're seeing the same concept," said Çağlar, listing towns that have been under heavy police and military attack in recent weeks.

Çağlar said that the actions of police who killed woman guerrilla Kevser Eltürk (Ekin Wan) and posed with her naked body were a declaration that the state would target women's bodies, given that women had led the struggle for Kurdish freedom and peace in the region.

"This isn't a war; it's a one-sided massacre that we're talking about here," said Çağlar. "It's the massacre of the people; it's politics conducted on women's bodies. As for us, we see this as an expression of the fear of the women's movement and we absolutely do not accept this."

Çağlar commented on the scenes of destruction she observed in the towns of Silvan, Varto and Silopi. Residents of the town described how Turkish forces pointed a gun at a 7-year-old child and threw tear gas at an eight-month-old baby. Çağlar herself was trapped inside as police in armored vehicles made announcements that if residents did not leave their neighborhood, police would "execute them by firing squad." Now, she said, a similar situation is ongoing in the nearby district of Lice. However, she said that women have played a leading role in resisting this in towns like Silvan.

"In Kurdistan, in Silvan, women are the leading force. It's women leading the call for peace and freedom," said Çağlar. "Women are the ones who are going out on the streets, without fear of the bullets, to stop the massacres that happen when people are prevented from going outside. It's women who are putting themselves on the line to protect the people. In Silvan, women really clearly demonstrated their spirit of resistance."

The treatment of the body of Ekin Wan, Çağlar said, was ultimately a demonstration that the state knows and fears the power of women.

"But the state should know very well that the more you do this, the more women and especially Kurdish women will resist, the more they will struggle, the more they will stand up for their dignity," she said.

(ny-şg/gc/cm)