Kurdish Women in Turkey today

At a time when negotiations concerning the integration of Turkey into the European Union have at last been opened, respect for its minorities is being more urgently required of Ankara than ever. Kurdish identity claims are still crying out loud, but their defence is now being taken up by women.

In Turkey, Leyla Zana was the first Kurdish woman to be elected to Parliament. In 1994, she was convicted and sentenced to jail for fifteen years for having proclaimed loud and clear her sympathy for the cause of equality between Turk and Kurd. Already in 1991, her staunch intervention in front of the Assembly had provoked a general outcry.

Three other Kurdish members of Parliament were locked up at the same time: Ohran Dogan, Hatip Dicle and Selim Sadak. Their relatives have also suffered a lot from their detention: visits are extremely rarely authorized in Turkey. Leyla Zana and Ohran Dogan’s daughters have mobilized to collect information and act as mediators between their family and the public.

The European institutions have also relayed this mobilization. In 1995, the European Parliament handed over the Sakharov award to Leyla Zana. In 2001, the European Court of Human Rights sanctionned Turkey for its infringement of the right to a fair trial. This pressure resulted in a second trial in March 2003 and Leyla Zana was finally liberated on the 8^th of June 2003.

Thanks to her, the status of Kurdish women has gradually evolved and they are now increasingly involved in politics, notably in the framework of the DEHAP party. In the region of Diyarbakir, they are active in political meetings, despite the pressure that the army exerts on them.

The women are also strongly involved in Kurdish demonstrations against the Turkish government organized by DEHAP, as a support for Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK leader who has been in jail since 1998. On the 1^st of May 2003, about 50,000 people (among whom 15,000 Kurds) protested in Istanbul under the DEHAP flag.

Eren Keskin is one of the many lawyers who has decided to fight to secure the right to claim the twin identity of being both a Kurd and a woman. Vice-president of the Turkish association for the defence of human rights (IHD), she is also the founder of a program for judicial assistance to assist women who have suffered sexual violence in jail.

On the 2^nd of May 2005, the Turkish brigade for vengeance (TIT) issued a direct physical threat to Eren Keskin. Those menaces add to the humiliations she has already endured. That is why the IHD association is currently placed under police protection, because its action is being illegally hindered. On September the 18^th, Eren Keskin received the Theodore-Haecker award for her political involvement. In April 2003, she was suspended from the bar of Istanbul and has since been targeted by 140 lawsuits launched by the Turkish administration.

Victims of extra-judicial executions, of illegal and arbitrary detention, of sexual violence and attacks, Kurdish women who live in prison are most of the time suspected of participating in the PKK rebellion or other activist groups. The lawyers at IHD spare no effort to get the regular procedure applied and in denouncing the recourse to torture during interrogations. Now, the new Turkish government is trying to attain conformity with European requirements concerning respect of human rights.

But the Kurdish population has been learning for a long time to get organized in order to satisfy its claims. The most important of its movements has surely been the Saturday Mothers’ one. It was launched on May the 14^th, 1995 to protest against the « disappearances » organized by the Turkish police. This association used to meet every Saturday in Istanbul to denounce the crimes committed by the State.

Still waiting for things to change, many a Kurdish family is miserably surviving in the ghetto in Diyarbakir, when they haven’t remained behind stranded in deserted villages. Other women have decided to join the clandestine guerrilla army, thus swelling the ranks of the PKK. Although formerly very few, mostly intellectuals during the ‘80s, they now hail from any social class and allegedly number about 2 000, out of a total of 6 000 warriors. Consequently, in 1995 the PKK created a Movement of the free women of Kurdistan, an entirely female army.

As for women who haven’t left Diyarbakir, the solution of complaining to the European Court of Human Rights remains. Finally, for those who can’t travel that far, the only decisive weapon which remains is that of giving birth, in the hope of transmitting their identity, in spite of the forced erasure being imposed by the Turkish republic.

In his last book, Abdullah Öcalan wrote : “Peace for the Kurds is now in the hands of women”. He seems to have been clairvoyant, knowing that the male population, really rarefied, has lost its capability for action.