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Archive for the ‘Kurdish feminism’ Category

Saturday Mothers: Take to the streets, say no to war

Posted in Kurdish feminism, Kurdish women on October 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Mothers gathered for the 393rd time to ask for justice

Source: ANF News

Saturday Mothers gathered for the 393rd time at Galatasaray Square in Istanbul, calling on the Turkish scoiety to take to the streets and to say no to war in the face of the most recently approved war motion for Syria.

“We will all lose our children in this war”, said mothers and pointed out that Turkey is being dragged into a new war environment.

Mothers asked Erdoğan if he will also send his son into this war and underlined that the people in Turkey will be suffering from a new war and pain in addition to the war going on for 30 years now.

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First Kurdish women’s website goes online

Posted in Kurdish feminism, tagged on September 19, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Turkey’s first ever Kurdish women’s web journal ”Feminkurd“ kicked off in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.

Source: Bianet

The website which employs only women is published in Kurdish and Turkish and features news stories, videos, caricatures and columns that pertain to women’s issues.

A year long project established by Kurdish women from different professional backgrounds, including teachers, doctors, lawyers and students, FeminKurd has taken a significant leap forward in giving voice to women whom the media has largely ignored.

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Women of Kurdish Democratic Union party push through pro-women policies in Western Kurdistan

Posted in Kurdish feminism, Kurdish women's rights Syria, tagged on August 22, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Under the slogan ‘’together to administer our areas autonomously’’ the permanent People’s Council in Western Kurdistan has held its second meeting.

The Council emphasized they will continue to further their democratic self-governance project. Report from the different Council Committees were read, including Justice, Health, Environmental, Statistics, Social Security and Religion Committee among many others. The permanent council of people’s council  listened to criticisms and discussed the different aspects of every committee’s work.

As demanded by the Women’s Committee the suspension of all Council members with a second wife was voted for. Members of the Women’s Committee said that decision was a means to secure women’s rights and to advance gender equality. The Committee also informed the Council of the opening of new women’s centers in a number of cities where training courses to empower women are being run.

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The women’s movement in Kurdistan: Interview with Professor Mary Davis

Posted in Kurdish feminism, women's rights Turkey on August 17, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Source: Peace in Kurdistan Campaign 

With over 6000 people currently in prison, including nearly 100 journalists, 40 trade unionists, hundreds of elected mayors, councillors and local officials, and thousands of members of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party appear to be relentless in their efforts to suppress the Kurdish struggle for liberation. Since 2009, thousands of these arrests have been made in the name of the ‘KCK operations’, which has targeted individuals for allegedly being members of the Union of Kurdish Communities. The KCK is a civil society organisation that the Turkish government claims is the urban wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and that has been officially designated as an illegal organisation by the government. Along with Turkey’s widely criticised anti-terror legislation (TMY), these policies have led to Turkey having a third of the world’s ‘terror suspects’ residing in its jails.

In many ways, it is on this front of Turkey’s war on its Kurdish citizens where the government’s approach is most insidious. To form a coherent, strong and resilient political movement in these conditions is extremely difficult. There are, however, a growing number of grassroots, local and national projects and initiatives that aim to confront this repression, and many of them are being led by Kurdish women. Professor Mary Davis, well-known academic, trade unionist and former elected member of the TUC women’s committee, recently returned from a solidarity delegation to North Kurdistan where she met with a number of the women at the forefront of this political movement.

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Roj Women publishes new Annual Activities Report

Posted in Kurdish feminism, Kurdish women, tagged on July 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

New Annual Activities Report: a short guide to learn more about Roj Women’s campaigns and services between April 2011 and March 2012

If you have been following closely our work during those 12 months you know that we have fought for the specific needs of Kurdish women to be acknowledged by the European Parliament in its recent ’2020 Perspective for Women in Turkey’, that we sent a delegation to study the risks faced by women human rights defenders in Kurdish Turkey and published a subsequent report, that we continue to provide services to empower women in London and to raise awareness of the urgent need to address violence against women and the limited economic, social and cultural rights of Kurdish women in the world.

Roj Women has been as active as ever and we want to share with you what has been achieved. You can find it all in the Annual Activities Report 2011/2012. We’ll be very happy to hear your feedback and views on the work we do. If you want to receive updates from us you can follow our blog and also sign up for email updates by emailing us to rojwomen@gmail.com.

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“More and more women are becoming politically active and so the number of women in prison is rising too.”

Posted in Kurdish feminism, Kurdish women on July 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

First impression and meetings of an European women’s delegation in North Kurdistan

Source: Peace in Kurdistan Campaign

Since 6th July 2012 a women delegation, with 12 participants from England and Germany in total, has been in North Kurdistan. Amongst the participants are representatives of different women’s rights and human rights organisations, as well as the well-known trade unionist and member of the women’s committee of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Professor Mary Davis.

The delegation was initiated by the Kurdish Women’s Office for Peace (Ceni) and supported by the Peace in Kurdistan Campaign in London, in order to give the work of the women’s academies a wider publicity; to strengthen the exchanges between women’s projects, women’s rights and human rights initiatives in Kurdistan and Europe, and to learn from each other; as well as to show practical international solidarity in the face of the increased repression by the Turkish state against the women’s movement and trade union movement.

From 6th until 9th July the delegation in Amed visited – amongst others – the women’s news agency JinHa, the women’s centre Dikasum and Kardelen, the human rights organisation IHD, the Association for Solidarity with Displaced Persons GöcDer, and the women’s academy, with the help of the women’s section of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). In all the talks, the women explained the difficulties as women – under conditions of war, state repression, poverty, and patriarchal violence – as well as their determination to building structures for solidarity.

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Turkey: BDP Women Respond To PM On Abortion

Posted in Kurdish feminism, women's rights Turkey on July 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

In a press conference at parliament on behalf of Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) women, Istanbul MP Sebahat Tuncel called for attention to the women’s organizations demands on abortion.

Source: Firat News

Responding to AKP government’s attempt to ban abortion, Tuncel MP underlined that the government shouldn’t develop policies on birth control methods over women.

Tuncel evaluated Prime Minister Erdoğan’s comparison between abortion and Uludere massacre as AKP’s inability of dealing with the massacre and continued as follows; “We will continue to live and breathe Uludere because of the fact that we face a government which tries to break away from the responsibility for the murder of 34 people. The government should know that not only Kurds but also all conscientious people will object to its efforts to dominate over women’s body through this massacre.”

Tuncel remarked that the debate on abortion lies on the AKP policy on population planning and added; “This is the incredible racist approach of a nation state mindset that aims to shape the future through the population structure of the society.”

Tuncel underlined that the prohibition of abortion will not only violate women’s rights but also lead to unlawful and unsecure ways for women in need of abortion. It is obvious that a government which fails to protect children’s right to life defends an embryo’s right to live as an attack against women, noted Tuncel and added that women’s health and right to live come before debates on abortion.

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Renowned trade unionist joins delegation in solidarity with Kurdish women in Turkey

Posted in Kurdish feminism, women's rights Turkey on July 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Professor Mary Davis, academic, trade unionist and elected member of the TUC women’s committee, will be travelling to southeast Turkey as part of an international solidarity delegation this Friday.  

Source: Peace in Kurdistan Campaign and the Kurdish Women’s Office for Peace

The delegation is organised by CENI – Women’s Office for Peace and supported by London-based Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, with financial support provided by the Lipman-Miliband Trust, UNISON South Lanarkshire and UNITE Northwest London branch.  In total, 11 women from across Europe will take part in the delegation, which aims to express solidarity and practical support to women’s initiatives in the Kurdish region of Turkey.

Professor of Labour History, formerly Head of Centre for Trade Union Studies, and founder of the Charter for Women campaign, Mary Davis will travel to the largest city in Turkey’s Kurdish region, Diyarbakir (Amed), to join the international delegates and visit many organisations in the area that aim to promote and strengthen women’s rights.  One such project is the Amed Women’s Academy, a school for adults that promotes cooperation and reciprocal learning between women, another is the first women-led news agency in Turkey, Jinha.  By connecting with these groups, and other grassroots women’s groups and trade unions, the delegation aims to develop international networks of support for their work and cause, and raise awareness of their work in Europe and the UK.

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Inequalities encountered by Kurdish women ‘all the greater’, says European Parliament

Posted in Kurdish feminism, Kurdish women, Kurdish women's economic rights, women's rights Turkey on June 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Roj Women campaigning puts the urgent need to bridge the regional gaps in women’s enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights in Turkey in European Parliament report

‘2020 Perspective for Women in Turkey’, a report recently produced by the Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee of the European Parliament, also known as FEMM, was voted and passed as a resolution in May 2012. Shadow rapporteur Marina Yannakoudakis and rapporteur Emine Bozkurt consulted civil society for the preparation of this report. Roj Women’s Association met them both and engaged in open dialogue with their offices in this process; our contribution was an important input to the content of the report. Our efforts focused on the need to bridge the regional gaps in women’s enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights in Turkey.

Higher poverty levels in Eastern Turkey as well as a ban to provide education in languages other than Turkish put Kurdish speaking girls at disadvantage in poorer Eastern Turkey. The differences with the West of the country are so significant that Turkey occupies the second place in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation) when it comes to income inequality.

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The 9th Kurdish Women’s Festival in London by Roj Women

Posted in Kurdish feminism, Kurdish women on June 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

A festival to celebrate the struggles of Kurdish women 

From 29 June to 1 July – Kurdish Community Centre, 11 Portland Gardens  London Borough of Haringey, N4 1HU

 

On Friday 29th Gültan Kışanak will open the event, a Kurdish journalist with long experience in community development for the municipality of Diyarbakir. She stood successfully as an independent in the 2007 parliamentary elections in Turkey and is now an MP fo Diyarbakir. She featured in the 2008 film “What a beautiful democracy” about the struggle of Turkish women running for parliament. At the beginning of 2009 it was reported that she had prepared a bill to enable the Kurdish language to be used in the public space.

On Saturday 30th June and Sunday 1st July the festival will feature cultural activities and debate. We will also count with Venge Dur, Mehmet Akbas and many more musicians. We hope to see you there too!

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