Women take to streets, defending İstanbul Convention

* Photos: ETHA and Fatoş Erdoğan

Click to read the article in Turkish

The protests against Turkey's withdrawal from the İstanbul Convention by a Presidential decision continue all across the country.

Women in several provinces of Turkey took to the squares on Saturday (March 27) to protest the decision.

In İstanbul, which gives its name to the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, women and LGBTI+s came together in Kadıköy İskele Square upon the call of the "Implement İstanbul Convention Group."

Police intervened against the women who wanted to go to the protest site through the Beşiktaş-Adalar Ferry Dock. Women, not allowed to enter the site, stormed the police barricade and entered the site.

Alana alınmayan kadınlar barikatı yıktı pic.twitter.com/3mjaXghDCB

— ETHA (@etkinhaberetha) March 27, 2021

Opening a banner that read "İstanbul Convention is ours, we don't give up", women also carried the placards that read "Protect women, not perpetrators of violence", "İstanbul Convention is ours", "Let's set up self-defense organizations against violence" ,"Annul the decision of withdrawal" and "Laborer woman at the forefront against male-dominant capitalist system."

The joint statement for the press was read out by İrem Kayıkçı and Esil Bayrakçı. Noting that they have been on the streets since the unilateral termination of the convention by AKP's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a resul of misogynist, anti-LGBTI+, religionist and conservative campaigns going on for months, women briefly stated the following:

"Those who gave this decision want Turkey to be the first country to withdraw from the convention which is an international convention preventing violence against women, whose name is İstanbul and which was opened for signature in İstanbul. But we remind you: İstanbul Convention is still in force and we will keep on struggling until every single line of it is enforced.

'You have already lost'

"We have a bad news for those who dared to give a decision about all women on their own by withdrawing from İstanbul Convention, who want to make women slaves to themselves, who inflict violence on women and want to have them married when they are still children, who inflict violence on LGBTI+s and women; we have bad news for misogynists, those who pat murderers on the back and want to turn gender identity and sexual orientation-based discrimination into an official state policy: The state might be on your side and against women today, but you have already lost.

'There is no return'

"You have lost because we exist, because we stand with one another, because we have derived our courage and our rights that you tried to rule out today from the women who struggled for centuries.

"You have lost because we will never give up giving our own decision, equality or freedom no matter what. You have lost since the moment we said, 'No'. Because there is no return from these.

'Fulfil you duty or resign'

"If the effort made to abolish the İstanbul Convention had been made to enforce it, women could be alive today.

"Those who did not enforce the Convention even though they are obligated to do so, those who do not prevent violence and abandon it to impunity, those who do not establish equality are a party to these murders.

"We put it plainly: Fulfil your duty or resign, because we cannot bear to lose one more woman any longer. We do not give up on the İstanbul Convention, the guarantee of our right to life, or a single right of ours. We call on everyone to raise our struggle until gender equality is ensured."

Women in Turkey's Aegean province of İzmir also met in Konak district and said, "İstanbul Convention is ours."

Meeting upon the call of the Democratic Women's Platform of Eskişehir province, women held a protest march from the Ulus Anıtı Square to Adalar Migros, saying, "We don't give up the İstanbul Convention."

In Çanakkale province, the İstanbul Convention Initiative protested against Turkey's withdrawal from the convention at Çanakkale Dock.

Opening a banner that read "İstanbul Convention is ours, we don't give up," women also made a press statement.

* Photo: Songül Korkmaz's social media account

In Batman province, Free Women's Movement (TJA) activists made a statement and said, "We will keep on saying that the İstanbul Convention is ours. We will not give up on it." (RT/SD)