Ankara- The new term of the Turkish Parliament begins today after a month's holiday. Women demand the assembly to take urgent steps to prevent violence against women and femicide. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is a political party having the most female MPs in the Turkish parliament. We ask HDP Women's Council Spokesperson and Batman MP Ayşe Acar Başaran about the women's policies of the ruling party and what they will do against these policies.

“The ruling party uses mechanisms against women”

Ayşe Acar Başaran points out that the AKP ruling party sees women as the biggest obstacle for it while trying to build its own regime and tries to keep women away from the struggle by leaving them unprotected in the atmosphere it shapes.

“AKP has been demanding women's labor and votes since the first day it came to power, and it skillfully does politics to protect borders formed by it for women. It uses all mechanisms to protect the patriarchy and it does not hesitate to do this publicly. It makes its policy stronger day by day using particularly media outlets, religious affairs, and the judiciary. It creates a de facto situation by not applying the existing mechanisms and laws while trying to eliminate the women’s achievements. The ruling party leaves women to face violence and femicide by persistently not implementing the international conventions it signed. When women try to defend themselves in this violent environment, the ruling party tries to accuse women without implementing the international conventions,” says Ayşe Acar Başaran.

Ayşe Acar Başaran points out that the AKP targets all women’s achievements and defines women's defense of their will as a crime. She says that women are not protected and women who have to use their self-defense cannot benefit from the laws despite the laws.

“Actually, women using their self-defense rights are told, ‘don’t object otherwise we will not protect you against violence you face; if you try to defend yourselves, we will not defend you.’ The main reason why the ruling party cannot solve such a problem is its ideological background corresponds to historical reality. The ruling party takes no offence. All of the people in charge of protecting women in the country show an approach targeting women. One of these people is the Minister of the Interior. He attacks the HDP and women’s struggle. Women's self-defense is also an ideological, political, and organizational self-defense mechanism.

“Collective struggle against attacks is important”

Highlighting that they represent many women's organizations as the HDP Women's Council, Ayşe Acar Başaran says they will work for women in the new term of the parliament. Mentioning that they are in contact with all women’s organizations in Turkey, Ayşe Acar Başaran says, “We can say that we represent the Kurdish women's struggle, the struggle of the feminist movement, left-socialist women. We are in contact with all women’s organizations in Turkey and try to keep struggling. We struggle for women’s internationalist struggle not only in Kurdistan and Turkey but also all around the world.”