SARYA DENİZ

News Center- There have always been wars in the history of the world. All soul-shattering massacres have been carried out by people. Women have always been the primary victims of wars. Wars have been waged on women throughout history. Today, nation-statist, fascist, and male-dominant governments have taken femicides much further. Women have been targeted again in the wars carried out over identities.  Sexual abuse, rape, slave markets, femicides have been written down in history as the shame of recent years. Moreover, rape has been used as a tool for social genocide and each rapist has been rewarded by the states themselves. In the Middle East society, and, of course, in Turkey, where women are identified with the country, the capture of women also means the capture of lands and identities. But there is something that has been forgotten or ignored; women have organized themselves against the policies of disidentifications and barriers despite everything. 

Strategy determined on women’s bodies

Women also paid the price of the ongoing war in Turkey, and they continue to pay; not only in these lands but also beyond the borders due to military operations. In Rojava, Turkey and its armed groups stand by the most disgusting tradition in history and keep carrying out their policies on femicides. As a strategy, the war has been shaped on women’s bodies. Messages have been sent using women. The organization and resistance of women have been tried to be broken through their bodies. The dirty face of the war has announced itself on social media platforms (the pictures of killed, tortured women). More common messages have been given in the digital world. 

The message of the murder of Deniz Poyraz 

The murder of Deniz Poyraz, who was brutally killed in the attack on the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) office in Izmir province, is one of the messages to women. That day, Deniz Poyraz didn’t go to the HDP office by chance. Deniz Poyraz was a member of the HDP, known as the “women’s party”. She was a resistant woman, who took to the streets for women’s rights, for the Istanbul Convention, and who demanded education in her mother language and fought for the rights of the Kurds. Therefore, the killer chose to give his message through women again. After the bloody attack, he took the picture of Deniz Poyraz and shared it on his status on WhatsApp. Free Women’s Movement (TJA) former spokesperson and HDP former MP Ayla Akat Ata made a speech about Deniz Poyraz during the hearing of the Kobanî Trial and said:

“The murder of Deniz Poyraz is similar to the murders of three Kurdish political women in Paris on January 9, 2013. The reason behind these murders is the hate speech of politics. Soylu (Turkey’s Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu) says, ‘PKK is a women’s movement’, he criminalizes politics in the legal field by making statements using ‘HDPKK (HDP and PKK)’. The explanation for this is: Every bullet is fired against women. Women are targeted again in the person of Deniz Poyraz. This situation shows itself because of the political attitude and language used by the political power. These attacks and murders haven’t been committed by individuals. Every bullet fired against us has a plan and a purpose.”

Bodies of women were tortured

 “Every bullet is fired against women,” said Ayla Akat Ata in her speech and we can understand how women have been targeted in recent years in her speech. The bodies of women were begun to be targeted in Turkey in the 1980s. Former sergeant Kasım Çakan wrote all information about the torture and unknown murders in his book. Many criminal complaints have been filed against the claims in his book but no action has been taken until now. In his book, Çakan says that a female fighter was raped. The book also tells how soldiers tortured the dead bodies of women in those years. 

In 2015, the AKP government declared 24-hour- curfews in the Kurdish cities. During the curfews, women were brutally killed in the streets. The photos showing their naked bodies were shared on social media platforms. Everything was done openly, in front of everyone. Ekin Wan was one of these women. She was killed, her dead body was tortured, she was undressed and the photos of her naked dead body were shared on social media platforms. 

Taybet İnan and 7 days…

Taybet İnan, who was targeted and killed by security forces during the 24-hour-curfew declared in the Silopi district of Şırnak province, was also one of these women. Her dead body was left lying on the street for seven days. The killing of Taybet İnan was a clear message to all women. After seven days, her body was taken and buried. No one has stood trial for her murder. A mother hit her daughter Cemile’s dead body in the refrigerator for three days so that her dead body would not decay. During that period, women and children faced the dirtiest face of violence by the state. 

On the other side of the border (Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan), the situation was the same. The photos of tortured dead bodies of women were shared on social media platforms. Barin Kobanê, Amara Renas, Hevrin Xelef , and many more women were brutally killed. Women became the subject of the messages intended to be given to women… Like Deniz Poyraz…

The fact that they never take into account: Women’s organized struggle

Even if the HDP, which has been targeted for being a women’s party, has been wanted to be intimidated by the closure case, arrests, detentions and attacks, the “powers” never take women’s organized struggle into account after the murder of Deniz Poyraz. Women keep struggling and resisting against crimes against humanity committed in the war zones and in the capitalist nation-states.