Ruşen Seydaoğlu, a lawyer affiliated with the Diyarbakır Bar Association in Turkey, writes about the democratic resistance of women deputies who shape Kurdish politics.
“Attempting to reverse this history of losses, to overcome gender inequality, to overcome the obstacles to women’s freedom, and to solve all other social problems through a women’s perspective and within democratic politics, breaks all the rules.”
It’s my obligation to remind you once again. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputies were elected by a highly conscious and political electorates, as they were seen as the only way out of the darkness in which we were imprisoned, without even going under the shadow of the government in power, its extensions, or some sort of unearned income, or clientelism. Women deputies contributed to this achievement with their multiple identities, their resistance and their mode of existence that turned the HDP into a women’s party. They stood for the representation of those who are excluded from politics for disrupting the system that imposes to be active in politics only within male-dominated borders of the bureaucracy, of women, youth, belief groups and the people.
The fact that women have evolved in accordance with this responsibility at every level of politics was the reason behind why they could steer Kurdish politics from the very beginning.They did not carry out this independently from the geography they came from and its realities. War and conflict have affected everyone in this country in one way or another whether they live in the Kurdish geography or not, but to think that the deputies could be independent of this and to turn this into counter-propaganda, was due to not being able to do politics or manage.
Although the current system tries to legitimize its masculinity by imposing certain local and national feelings, Semra Güzel and the Kurdish women’s movement, of which she is a part, did not give up. Because her story is a story of war. It is about being or try to survive as a woman in the middle of war. It is a kind of story that you would encountered with whoever you talk to in this region. But Semra was a woman, so the parties of the war chose the most familiar way to cover up her agency; they provoked racism and with its backbone, sexism.
Of course, we know that wars did not start with this government. But people continue to lose their fathers, mothers, siblings, loved ones, homes, and homelands because the politics of war is still being carried out today. The fight didn’t even start today. Against the wars declared by colonialists, governments, rapists, where young people, women, children and nature were massacred, various struggles have always emerged in different parts of the world. That’s why government’s claims that we are defeated have never reflected the truth, the culture of resistance came into play when they least expected it, and the opposition preserved their existence.
It will be so again.
It is not easy. It takes a solid presence and a genuine morality to work for democratic politics, to develop such policy and to take responsibility. The path taken by the HDP, its members, deputies and women deputies rises above this existence and morality. Attempting to reverse this history of losses, to overcome the inequality between men and women, to overcome the obstacles to women’s freedom, to struggle for the rights of women and Kurds, and to solve all other social problems through a women’s perspective and within democratic politics, and to defend them in the parliament, breaks all the rules.
No matter what they encounter, whether they are physically prevented from being in that parliament, or their immunity is lifted, or they are targeted as enemies… What they sprout in society will keep them there. Those who know this are losing their sleep, let them lose… The claim of liberation of the people shakes the system that sustains itself with racism, colonialism and sexism. That’s why a minister instructs the paid officials of the state to handcuff a female deputy, and attacks the honor and dignity of the women and peoples she represents. He thinks he can do what no one else can do.
He is wrong.
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