TURKEY’S only women’s news agency Jin News today launched a major solidarity campaign calling on women to “raise their voices together” and become volunteer reporters for the organisation.

The news agency issued the appeal with many of their journalists facing pressure from the Turkish state which has increased attacks on women’s rights, the left, and journalists.

In a statement Jin News said that the struggle of women continues while they are “being slaughtered and subjected to violence.”

The Turkish state is seeking to pull out of the Istanbul Convention —  an international agreement on combating violence against women.

Earlier this year President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it can be “annulled.”

He told those gathered at an Itfar event that the convention “is not Nas [a section of the Koran] and not a measure for them.”

“The violations of women’s rights are being legitimised. But against these attacks, women do not step back from their struggle,” the agency said.

Jin News was initially known as Jinha News, and was established on International Women’s Day March 8, 2012. 

But it was deemed to pose a threat to the state and was one of hundreds of opposition media organisations closed down by presidential decree in October 2012.

One of its founders was Kurdish artist Zehra Dogan who was jailed for nearly two years because of a painting depicting the violence of the Turkish state during military operations in Nusaybin in 2015.

Jin News was established because of the issues facing women in Turkey and the way news about women was being reported, even by the “radical press.”

“We established Jinha with just five people as a women-only news agency. The camera person was a woman, the journalists were women. They were all volunteers,” she told the Star earlier this year.

She explained that the women refused to accept the closure of the agency placing themselves on the front line of the struggle, saying “in this war we chose to take a side.”

Jin News said today they are continuing the struggle through the press and continue to be a platform where women can make their voices heard.

“We transform our anger against the violence we are subjected to, our anger against the media legitimising our massacre, the judiciary that whitewashes our killers into our work to expose those facts,” the agency’s statement continued.

The agency appealed for women to “become more powerful with us and share with us the successes and the struggles and the stories you witness of women.”

If you are interested in writing for Jin News, they can be reached on WhatsApp notification number: +90 0530 235 66 56. 

For further information email [email protected] and cc [email protected]