“THEY electrocuted me in the police station. They smashed my head on the ground. I can’t feel my hands and feet. My ribs hurt. I was tortured for several days. I was raped and sexually assaulted.”

Ruken Deniz was speaking to a court following her arrest in which police accused her of protecting members of the PKK, who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan brands as terrorists, by hiding them in her home, an allegation she denies.

After her release, she described to the Mesopotamia News Agency how police had been frustrated that she didn’t seem to be affected by the electricity. She heard them say: “She is like a pig … Let’s give her 200 volts.”

Ruken is one of thousands of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) supporters, mayors and MPs who have been victim of Erdogan’s “crackdown” on resistance to his party’s misogynistic and anti-Kurdish policies.

The HDP co-chair system guarantees sex equality at all levels. Erdogan has branded the system “an act of terrorism” and claimed that the women in office have been appointed by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Speaking to a conference on Women and Justice in Istanbul in 2014, he said that women cannot be equal to men because it is “against nature.”

With at least 3,000 women murdered since the AKP (Justice and Development Party) came to power and the majority of them killed in their homes by husbands, fathers, brothers and other male relatives, it is hardly surprising that Turkey has been branded a “slaughterhouse” for women.

The men who committed these murders have escaped punishment.

Sadly, it is not just adult females who suffer under this brutal regime.

After reading about the horrifying Turkish child rape Bill in the Morning Star, TSSA Women in Focus launched a campaign to demand that the Bill was scrapped.

The Bill proposes that paedophiles be granted an amnesty for raping children, as long as they marry them.

Women’s rights activists have warned that this law could lead to the reduction of the legal age for sexual intercourse to under 12 years and that it would hit refugee women who are often forced to marry for money, with a higher price for younger brides.

Similar “marry-your-rapist” laws have been in place in countries across the Middle East and north Africa but, thanks to tireless campaigning, women’s rights activists in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine have been successful in blocking or repealing them.

In Tunisia, women’s rights groups rose up in protest against the law in 2017 and were successful in sending a message that rape is a crime and should be treated as such.

During the protests, placards reading “How I Met Your Mother? I Raped Her When She Was 13” were seen being held up by demonstrators in the crowds and later in news reports.

This year the placard was revived in Turkey, as 2020 marked the third attempt by Erdogan’s government to pass the Bill. 

TSSA has been campaigning for human rights for our sisters and brothers in Turkey. We have passed motions at our annual conferences demanding that the British government stop normalising relations with Turkey, including arms sales, while the country continues to persecute and jail its own people on trumped-up charges of terrorism. 

Conference also agreed to send a letter of solidarity to Seda Taskin, a female Kurdish journalist who was jailed for speaking out about women’s rights in Turkey. 

Our women’s group, Women in Focus, has affiliated with the HDP Women’s Forum and will send a delegation to Ankara after the pandemic is over. 

We took a motion to TUC Women’s Conference in March which resolved to urgently speak out for our sisters in Turkey and in support of the Kurdish people and their right to self-determination. 

We will continue to campaign against the sickening child rape Bill, however many times it is brought back.

While Turkey continues to have the highest number of imprisoned journalists anywhere in the world, it is up to us as trade unionists to shine a light on the struggles of women and girls in the country. 

It will be a difficult task, especially when this Tory government has previously laid out the red carpet for Erdogan and approved £1.3 billion of arms sales to Turkey since 2013.

But the strength of the women in Turkey to fight against injustice should be an inspiration to us all.

On International Day Against Violence Against Women and Girls, I hope my sisters and brothers in the labour movement will remember the words of HDP co-chair Pervin Buldan —
“You can break down doors by force but you can never break the will of the people.” 

To sign the petition against the child rape Bill go to mstar.link/ChildAbuseTurkeyPetition.

Sarah-Jane McDonough is chair of Women in Focus, transport union TSSA’s womens’ section.