Women are marching!

The greatest achievement of the Republic is secularism. The guardians of secularism are the women of this country. Women of all ages—aunts, grandmothers, granddaughters—we are marching on November 12 for freedom and secularism!

At home, on the street, at work, at school, in the hospital, and even at the courthouse... WOMEN continue to be murdered in every corner of Turkey!

The date is November 3, 2023. The location is the Seferihisar Courthouse in İzmir. 23-year-old Neşe Keçkin, a mother of two, was stabbed to death by her husband, from whom she was in the process of divorcing, in front of the courthouse. Neşe Keçkin did not even make it into two lines of news in our media. Yet, she had big dreams for the future. Just like thousands of our sisters who were murdered by the hands of men. In the last 20 years in Turkey, a number of women equal to the capacity of a football stadium have been murdered by the hands of men.

Despite this, the political power withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, which aimed to protect women and prevent violence against them.

They did not stop there. A closure lawsuit was filed against the We Will Stop Femicide Platform, which fights tooth and nail to prevent femicides, on the grounds that it engaged in "immoral" activities.

Is defending women's right to life and fighting so that women are not murdered an immoral activity?

Thanks to the testimony of the families of murdered women, the lawsuit to close the association was rejected.

However, the political power does not stand still. While women are being murdered one after another in these lands every day, while they are being thrown out of windows, they want to change the Civil Code by claiming that men are the victims.

They are attempting to limit women's right to alimony, which is already meager.

With the ÇEDES (I Am Sensitive to My Environment, I Protect My Values) project they launched in schools, they are appointing imams, preachers, religious services experts, and Quran course instructors—whom they describe as "Spiritual Counselors"—to every school to provide values education, and they are making prayer rooms mandatory in daycare centers.

They are making religious classes mandatory for the first, second, and third grades of primary school.

They are changing the national education curriculum.

Is the next stage the end of co-education?

The greatest achievement of the Republic is secularism. The guardians of secularism are the women of this country. Women of all ages—aunts, grandmothers, granddaughters—we are marching on November 12 for our Constitutional rights.

Feeling Nazım Hikmet in our hearts,

Wholeheartedly,

Laughing,

We are marching...