After all activities have been banned at Istanbul’s central Taksim Square on May 1, the Workers' Day will be celebrated in a rally in the market square in Bakirköy district. The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) called for strong participation in the rally.

The white headscarves traditionally worn by Kurdish mothers are a symbol of peace. In recent weeks, there have been almost daily police attacks on mothers of prisoners on hunger strike in Turkey and northern Kurdistan. The images of mostly elderly women wearing white headscarves, beaten or dragged on the ground by security forces with truncheons, have provoked great indignation.

Cengiz Çiçek, co-chair of the Istanbul HDP organization, spoke to ANF on 1 May and said: "The white headscarf is a symbol intended to pave the way to peace and brotherhood in this land. The mothers who are abused and humiliated by the police in front of Gebze Prison only pursue the goal that their children do not die. If their children do not die, the children of the other nations will not die either. If their children do not die, no one will be able to use the death of soldiers to build their own power. There will be no further lynching attempts. The white headscarf is the antidote for all evil, so to speak. On May 1, we need to make this antidote."

The Istanbul HDP branch wants to connect the struggle of the working people with the fight of the oppressed on May 1st. The provincial association co-chairperson Çiçek said that the Kurdish people's struggle for democracy and freedom imposes their righteous demands on the system. He noted that the first name associated with the Kurdish liberation struggle was Abdullah Öcalan. According to Cengiz Çiçek, Öcalan is the most democratic actor for a solution to the Kurdish question and is completely isolated from the outside world: "We must demonstrate that the total isolation of Öcalan is synonymous with the treatment toward the Kurdish people."

"As long as there is no fair and democratic treatment of the Kurdish question, a pillar of democratization will be paralyzed. This paralysis benefits only the rulers. When we go to Istanbul with white headscarves on May 1, we will be calling for peace, equality and justice. The white headscarf stands for us for the struggle for liberation," Çiçek said in his call for May 1st.