"Minister Atalay Should Ask Women about Kurdish Initiative"

Around 500 women took part in the Peace Festival in Maçka's Democracy Park in central Istanbul yesterday (24 August).

The festival was organised by the Women's Initiative for Peace; among those participating were Sebahat Tuncel, Istanbul MP for the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), journalist İnci Hekimoğlu, and academic Nükhet Sirman.

A press statement, read in Kurdish and Turkish by three women, demanded that the women be consulted in the "Kurdish initiative".

This was also called for by Tuncel in her speech. She added, "And what about the closure of the Günlük newspaper or the DTP? Does that mean that the will of the Kurdish people is ignored? We want a real initiative, we want sincerity."

Tuncel added that the dialogue needed to be with the Kurdish people and imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, and that the women's movement had to be taken into consideration.

"Pain only has a language"

Prof. Dr. Sirman from the Bosphorus University said that women had been treated with contempt for practising "politics of pain", but that women were actually speaking the language of everyday life:

"Pain knows no politics, but it has a language. Women think about what their children have done or what they are going to cook for them in the evening. Instead of with strategic utterances, they speak with the practices of daily life."

Hilal Kaplan, an Islamic sociologist, said "(Prime Minister) Erdoğan says that motherhood cannot have any ideology. In that case, Erdoğan, who has been meeting mothers of martyrs (i.e. soldiers who have died), should also meet with the Saturday Mothers (relatives of those who disappeared in detention)."

The festival lasted from 3 pm until 9 pm. There were musical performances, film screenings, as well as sales of food, magazines, handicrafts and books. (EZÖ/AG)

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