Bêrîtan Elyakut/JINHA

AMED – Sebahat Tuncel, general co-chair of the DBP (Democratic Regions Party), noted that the gender-equal co-chair system tended to lead to women’s visibility in every area of life. “At the root of the attacks on co-chairs and the political genocides today is this. All the attacks are targeted at women’s and the peoples’ victories,” said Sebahat.

As political genocide operations continue to target the DBP and HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party), DBP general co-chair Sebahat Tuncel said that one of the fundamental targets of the attacks as the co-chair system and described this system. Sebahat explained that in 2005, intensive internal debates took place about the need to socialize politics as many agreed that the tendency of a centralized authoritarian politics was not to solve problems, but to intensify them.

“Based on the recommendation of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, we started to debate a new form and in 2005, we first took up the issue of how the co-chair system could be developed,” said Sebahat.

Sebahat noted that Abdullah Öcalan had proposed a co-chair system, but that such a system existed only in Germany and was not at the level that they wanted. Sebahat described the co-chair system that they desired as one that would be implemented in every area and would appeal to all social groups. Because there were no practical examples of such a co-chair system, Sebahat said they had problems, but that 100,000 signatures were gathered during that period supporting the proposed system.

Describing the great excitement around implementing the co-chair system, Sebahat noted that men had extreme anxiety about the system.

“Our male friends treated this like it was just women’s problem. Finally, we officially started the co-chair system, but we had some problems with implementation. Our first co-chairs were Ahmet Türk and Aysel Tuğluk. The two of them went through the hardest period for this system,” said Sebahat.

Sebahat said that the strength of the women’s councils and struggle led to important victories for the democratization of politics.

“We struggled for the co-chair system for a long time. Now we’ve won this struggle and it has legally been included in political party law,” said Sebahat.

Sebahat said that in the most recent period, debates had begun on bringing the co-chair system to all organizations, and that outside the Kurdish political movement, a number of political parties had the co-chair system on their agendas. She described the co-chair system as having reached the status of a new model.

“The most fundamental victory of the co-chair system is that it ensured that women take part in decision-making mechanisms. It ensures women’s visibility, and it ensures that we look at things from a perspective that questions the patriarchal system and is in favor of women’s liberation. These are among the most important victories. The co-chair system also led to changes in men, and we learned to govern collectively,” said Sebahat.

Sebahat said that as the women’s struggle continues through the KJA (Free Women’s Congress), the victories won with women’s leadership have become a target for those in political power.

“For women to be visible in every area of life leads to ideological and political tendencies. Because women said ‘no’ to the patriarchal system, those tendencies are on the rise. When society sees what’s right, it demands it and this becomes threatening for those in political power,” said Sebahat.

“At the root of the attacks on co-chairs and the political genocides today is this. All the attacks are targeted at women’s and the peoples’ victories. They want to entirely remove women’s visibility in politics. In spite of all this, the struggle of women and their standpoint are very valuable, so we will absolutely be victorious.”

(gc/cm)