DIYARBAKIR, Northern Kurdistan, — Kurdish women held their first conference in Diyarbakir on Sunday. Leila Zana the Kurdish female politician who served 15 years in prison for speaking Kurdish attended the conference and said; Kurdish women are leading the democracy and freedom struggle.
Delegates from 45 cities in Turkey and Kurdistan attended the conference.
About two thousand women watched one of the biggest events of Kurdish women organizations.
Speaking on the conference BDP’s co-president Gultan Kisanak said the only way to resist against oppressive policies is organizing women in every part of the country. She called the policies of the Turkish state “social genocide” in her speech.
She reminded the latest rape incidents in which most of the victims are Kurds in different parts of the country saying that rape crime now has a racist nature in Turkey.
Former Democracy Party MP Leyla Zana also spoke at the event. She said that Kurdish women are leading the democracy and freedom struggle and they are not an instrument of somebody as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan calls it.
She also called the Turkish government to take some positive steps to convince the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK) to extend the unilateral ceasefire which will expire today.
Zana asked Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan to show more efforts on bringing peace to the region and reconsider his decision to step back from the peace process after 31 October.