After attacking women in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkish government is now after the women who danced on the streets in Izmir.

Following the women’s protest dance in Chile against their attackers, the same protests have been organized in Turkey where attacks against women are on the rise.

The protests around the world are calling attention to rape, murder and beatings of women. However, in Turkey it was the women who got attacked by the police when they tried the same protests. Turkey is the only country that has banned the ‘Las Tesis’ protest, the name given by women to these dances.

The protests in Ankara and Istanbul were met with heavy police presence and attack. Many leaders and protesters were beaten and detained by the police for dancing and demanding an end to violence against women.

Seeing the backlash and the negative image of this suppression in the world, the Turkish government decided to handle the event differently in Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey. Instead of directly attacking the women during the demonstration, the police collected information on who participated and started operations against them later.

A list of 25 women was collected and 10 participants have already been taken in. The rest were called by phone to surrender to the authorities.

The ‘Women’s Defense’ organization behind the protests jointly with other women’s associations tweeted their commitment to defend the demonstrating women. The tweet said, “It is our struggle to protect our bodies and lives. You can’t prevent this struggle.”

The only place women were able to show their support and protest was in the National Assembly.  The women representatives of the opposition parties to the Islamic and nationalist coalition staged a Las Tesis demonstration in the General Assembly hall and chanted the words of the popular protest right where the government ministers could not avoid hearing them.

The interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, was outraged that the protest he tried banning on the streets was being performed right in front of his eyes by the elected women representatives. The immunity of the representatives prevented him from taking any action against them, however, after the event he went on a tirade against women parliamentarians and threatened them, saying, “Despite the constitution, I will evoke the broadest authority I have to go after these.”

After his reaction to women demanding safety, the interior minister has been on the receiving end of criticisms for attacking the demonstrations.  Even the papers who are usually very soft critics or friendly to the government took the side of the women.  A writer, Ertuğrul Özkök, from the daily Hürriyet said, “The government insists that the assaults on women will be solved only by law and order and by the government.  However, more than 420 murders of women this year alone shows the government is incapable of solving this issue.  For this reason, the women in Chile started dancing.  However, what does the government here say about detaining the women who are merely doing the same protest?”

Answering this article Süleyman Soylu wrote back saying, “Permission was given for the protest, however, the women started chanting ‘murderer’ and ‘rapist’ to the police and to the judges.  We are not going to permit this.”

However, soon this sensitivity to protect the honor of the police and the judges made the interior minister the butt of jokes.  His pictures with a “friendly journalist” Nagehan Alçı, who had previously also depicted the Turkish state as “murderous state” were posted all over the internet.  Nagehan Alçı is a woman writer that puts on a “modern” look and supports the Islamic government from a “modernist, western” perspective.

When this “friendly” writer accused the Turkish state to be “murderous”, the junior party of the coalition government, MHP, which is known for its ultra-nationalistic and racist position and its relationship to street gangs, had angrily reacted, “If you accuse the state of murder you are targeting the homeland, you destroy the nation.” To quell the criticisms from the government she immediately went to a presidential reception and posed for photographs with no other than the interior minister himself!

When considering the exponential increase in the brutal attacks against women in Turkey and the contribution to these attacks by the official police under the ministry of interior, the protest of the women representatives in the National Assembly dons an extra meaning. As the event was televised nationally on the official Assembly TV, it was clear to everyone that the performed protest was directly against the interior minister himself.

While the female representatives shouted the very same chants that put the women on the streets in jail, other opposition representatives held the pictures of slain women as support in the back seats.  The women wore the special lavender scarves symbolizing their solidarity with the women victims of domestic abuse.  It is still an irony that women in Turkey are only able to protest the violent attacks under the protection of immunity in the National Assembly while they are not permitted to express their concerns for their lives on the streets.

Sendika.Org News (M.B.)