Yüksekdağ: As a Turkish Woman, I Take Remaining Silent to these Pictures As an Insult

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On the meeting held in the headquarters of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Co-Chair Figen Yüksekdağ has made a statement on the photograph of the dead naked body of a woman claimed to be the naked body of a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) member murdered by the security forces in Cizre district of Şırnak.

The Governorship had asserted that the photograph in question had nothing to do with Cizre and it had been intended to taint the operations completed in the district by such accusations.

“The governor lies”

Some of the headlines from Yüksekdağ’s speech are as follows:

“We are incredibly sorry for the shameful photographs. But we are not ashamed. When the tyrants attempt oppression, we women set out to resistance. They should know that after seeing this photograph, we will be in an even bigger woman resistance.

“What is naked today is not the body of  a woman whom they have slaughtered but the very understanding of the government of war itself. And there is nothing they could wear to disguise themselves as human. Even after these photographs were published by Gendarmerie Special Forces (JÖH) and Police Special Forces (PÖH) as well as sent to our Şırnak MPs on Twitter, the Governor of Şırnak dare shamelessly announce that the photographs were not taken in Cizre and are the works of the ones who want to cover the success of the state in Cizre.   

“Şırnak Governor who says that these photographs are not from Cizre is obviously and publicly lying. All the information like the street and the details on the photograph confirm that they belong to Cizre”.

“Bodies nowhere to be found”

“Most of copses taken to the morgue do not have physical integrity. More than half of them are burned. Not only the alive ones, they have also burned the ones whom they have already killed pouring oil on them. I talked to our Şırnak MP yesterday, the bodies of the women whose photographs they have published are nowhere to be found. One can expect everything of them.

“There are 82 corpses belonging to our people which could be delivered to the morgue from different buildings in Cizre. Yesterday, Efkan Ala (Interior Minister) announced that they have run a successful operation in Cizre which has been completed. The AKP-Palace (Justice and Development Party) wants that this operation is over but they have sunk in such a cruel violence that it can’t.

"I, as a Turkish woman, take remaining silent to these shameless attacks conducted in the name of Turkishness as an insult to myself. They insult Turkish women by these attacks. The ones committing this atrocity say ‘We did this on behalf of Turkishness, defending the motherland’”.

Earlier, the naked dead body of a woman claimed to belong to a People’s Defence Forces (HPG) member; Kevser Eltürk (Ekim Wan) had been exposed in Varto district of Muş province and the Governorship had announced that they would launch an investigation into the ones publishing the photographs. (NV/DG)