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* Photos: Evrim Kepenek, Hikmet Adal / bianet
Click here to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish
Thousands of women and LGBTI+ gathered near Taksim for the March 8 International Women's Day yesterday evening.
Gathering in Cihangir, women and LGBTI+ people commemorated the women killed, protested the government policies, sent messages to the world, and had fun. The night march ended at 21:00 after reading out the press statement (below).
bianet was there to report the 21st Feminist Night March.
17:50 Police are asking the citizens who want to walk up to Taksim from Karaköy or Eminönü, etc. to show their accommodation addresses through the e-state applications and not allowing them to pass otherwise.
17:55 A group of women and LGBTI+ people are waiting in front of the Taksim First Aid, Training and Research Hospital.
18.20 The crowd in front of the Cihangir multi-floor car park building is growing.
19:15 Women and LGBTI+ people are waiting for 19:30 pm, the hour for which the call has been made for the March 8 Night March.
19:20 Police do not allow the women and LGBTI+ people coming from the Karaköy direction to reach Boğazkesen.
19:26 Women are chanting "Jin Jiyan Azadî," (life, women, freedom in Kurdish).
19:35 Passing through Alçakdam Street was allowed. Women and LGBTI+ people are marching and chanting "Government, resign."
19:44 Women are chanting "Here" after calling the names of women killed by men: İpek Er, Çağla Joker, Sevim Naşar, Hande Kader, Özgecan Arslan, Fatma Altınmakas, Ayşe Yılmaz, Ayşe Paşalı, Şule Çet, Pınar Gültekin, Ceren Damar, Gülistan Doku, Meral Şahin and Azra Gülendam.
19:52 The police "allowed" women and LGBTI+ people to pass through Mebusan Street in groups of five.
20.14 Women and LGBTI+ are chanting "Not our lives but patriarchy to collapse," "Push, push, push the barricade." İstanbul chairperson of the Republican People's Party, Canan Kaftancıoğlu is also present.
21.00 21. The Feminist Night March ended after the press statement was read.
21.50 After the statement was read, the police intervened with the women who wanted to march to Taksim using tear gas. There were many taken into custody.
We are in a feminist revolt for the patriarchy to collapse, not our lives! We are here, we are on the street for the 21st Feminist Night March where we fill the streets and the nights with feminist revolt, joy, and solidarity. We have seen a lot in twenty years; war, occupation, poverty, racism, increasing exploitation, LGBTI+ hatred, a pandemic that could not be managed, economic crisis, and ever-strengthening patriarchy. They are trying to show the destruction that patriarchal capitalism causes as a natural disaster to us. Those who destroy nature and our cities in search of easy income show us that they do not care a bit about human life again with their way of responding after the disaster. They are trying to threaten the people who are trying to build solidarity in the earthquake-hit regions using the police, to criminalize the solidarity and to make people enemies to one another. We are sad, we are enraged! We, the women, know very well how human life is disregarded, how the state is incapable of fulfilling its responsibilities, and the consequences! We know this government well because it has; Withdrawn from the İstanbul Convention overnight, paved the way for attacks on 6284, the local legislation on the fight against violence against women, encouraging male violence, Is sending the women who go to the police headquarters in order to complain about male violence back home, reducing the sentences of perpetrators of violence against women in courts, convicting the women who exercise self-defense with heavy sentences, attacking the right to alimony, and trying to prevent abortion. We know that they have closed public nurseries, making people dependent on the private sector for child care, and the poor on religious sects for the same. We know that they are leaving the whole burden of unpaid labor on women and at the same time making women cheap labor for the capitalists. We know that this government pursues policies that imprison women in the family, that do not accept women to exist otherwise. We know that this government is portraying LGBTI+ people as a target and is trying to legitimize marriage at child age. The Directorate of Religious Affairs has an endless budget while the nurseries are being closed, and education in religious institutions is being encouraged and does not consider harmful to hand over unattended children today following the earthquake to religious institutions. We know this government, this male state, for trying to prevent us, our revolt with its water-cannon vehicles, its barricades, and hundreds of police each year on March 8. We know that the consequences of disaster we lived is double for women; the burden to continue life, to re-establish it, on women in situations of disaster also. We see how their needs are regarded as subordinate. One month has passed, and we witness that their lives are so difficult. All of this has shown us that feminist struggle and solidarity are the only ways to build a world without violence, injustice, and inequality. It has shown us once again that our request for building a new world is so legitimate. As in each year, we are together here. We are here against the male state, homophobia, transphobia, racism, exploitation, and the destruction that patriarchal capitalism brings. We are here to stand by each other, to revolt against all kinds of violence that the patriarchal system creates, tol be in solidarity, to resist, and to build our lives on justice and equality. We do not give up our struggle, we do not give up our lives, we do not leave each other and we do not give up our dream for building a feminist world. We are enraged, we are in mourning, we are here, and we are not going anywhere. We are in revolt against patriarchal capitalist destruction! |
(EMK/HA/TY/PE)
