Bêrîtan Elyakut/JINHA

AMED – Kurdistan women’s organization KJA has been conducting a series of diplomatic meetings. KJA speaker Ayla Akat Ata explained that the KJA maintains strong ties with women’s movements around the world and that they work as women to perform diplomacy of the people.

The Congress of Free Women (KJA) Diplomacy Unit has conducted a series of meetings with ambassadors and diplomats from European countries related to killings of women and recent developments in Kurdistan. KJA speaker Ayla Akat Ata described the diplomatic meetings to JINHA.

Ayla explained that the KJA has been holding diplomatic meetings regarding the developments in Kurdistan that have emerged since April 2015, when all access was cut to jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. In the meetings, the KJA dealt with issues such as how women evaluated these developments and what their criticisms were.

An outcome of the KJA’s international relationships with women’s movements, Ayla said, was that the World March of Women called protests in front of Turkish embassies to protest the killing of KJA member and woman politician Sêvê Demir in the besieged town of Silopi.

Ayla said that the KJA was determined to develop “the peoples’ diplomacy” and to provide an alternative to the current state-led diplomacy.

“All women have shown up until now that in this challenging time, they are by our side,” said Ayla. “We believe that they will be by our side again as developments continue so that the people of Kurdistan do not lose and so that this shared struggle results in a dignified success.”

(ck/fk/cm)