JINHA

AMED – Women in Diyarbakır have announced the foundation of the Women’s Civil Defense Units (YPS-Jin).

The women’s defense organization YPS-Jin, recently founded in many cities in Northern Kurdistan, has announced the founding of its Diyarbakır units. The Diyarbakır Command of the YPS-Jin released a written announcement on the occasion. The YPS-Jin noted that the ruling AKP power in Turkey had sacrificed the peace process, initiated by jailed PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] leader Abdullah Öcalan, for its own narrow gains.

“In the month of July, there began a process of total annihilation of the Kurds through the bombing of the mountains and the villages. Now, this annihilation project has continued for months in our cities through the most savage and inhumane practices,” said the YPS-Jin, referring to the curfews declared for months at a time in Kurdish cities.

“There is an attack on young and old, women and children, all members of society. People are being left unable to meet their most basic human needs. They are left starving and thirsty. Artillery is launched at the homes of innocent civilians. Our people are being forced to migrate,” said the group, which noted that hundreds of children, women and other civilians had been killed in the last five months.

The group noted that Kurdish women have led the struggle to maintain these people’s existence and secure freedom.

“The patriarchal system tries first of all to slaughter the hope for liberation that is blooming among increasingly awakened Kurdish women,” said the group. They noted that the patriarchal system had killed three symbols of the Kurdish women’s movement in Paris in 2013—Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Şaylemez—and was now, on the third anniversary of this killing, slaying Kurdish women in an attempt to break the resistance.

“Against these attacks, it is women’s most natural right and duty to defend their society and themselves,” said YPS-Jin. The group promised to struggle against all the state’s annihilation tactics, as well as all efforts to break women’s resistance through harassment, rape and forced sex work.

(fk/cm)