Turkey should give women peace-process role: activist

By Kasim Ileri

ANKARA

Turkey’s government should give women a specific role in the Kurdish peace process, a prominent female Kurdish activist has told the Anadolu Agency. 

Yuksel Avsar was speaking on Tuesday around the one-year anniversary of the ‘solution process’ between Ankara and militant Kurdish separatists. The process began in March 2013 with a letter from Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) head Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned on Imrali island in Turkey's Sea of Marmara, asking PKK militants to go on ceasefire.

Since then negotiations between Turkish state officials and Ocalan have continued. The government, in return for the ceasefire, has made several democratic reforms, including the lifting of a ban on the Kurdish language. 

Avsar, a leftist Kurdish activist and a former member of the now-inactive Participatory Democracy Party (KADEP), said that she had already paid the price for the conflict as a woman and was ready to contribute to a solution to Kurdish issue. 

Avsar was jailed following Turkey’s 1980 military coup and was tortured for more than 45 days in Ankara’s notorious Mamak military prison for being a member of the leftist Revolutionary East Culture Association (DDKO). Avsar spent more than three years in jail, an experience she describes as a "tunnel of horror."

Stating that women are directly exposed to the impact of conflicts, Avsar said: "Women, as civil fronts of wars, have played crucial roles in peace processes in world such as the Ugandan, Irish, South African cases."

Avsar noted that in Turkey, women, as direct victims of the conflict of Kurdish issue – a 30-year fight between the Turkish armed forces and the PKK – have a lot to say on the solution of the conflict.

"Women in Turkey have their children, husbands or brothers either in the army or among the PKK militants, thus they should take to the stage and take discussions beyond security issues," she said. 

Claiming that women can publicize the human side of the armed conflict between the army and PKK, Avsar said: "Women can maintain transparency of the process which, in turn, will bring about a social reconciliation in society."

Avsar, while saying that she opposed the AK Party government, stated that she is supportive of its policy on the peace process, adding that were thousands of women ready to contribute to the solution process both in the east and west of Turkey.

englishnews@aa.com.tr