Activists from the Asya Yüksel Women's Council held a rally in Duisburg as part of the "100 Reasons to Prosecute the Dictator" campaign to demand that AKP leader Erdoğan be tried as the main perpetrator of femicide.
In the German city of Duisburg, activists of the Asya Yüksel Women's Council held a rally on Thursday on the occasion of the "100 reasons to prosecute the dictator" campaign. The campaign, initiated by the Kurdish Women's Movement in Europe (TJK-E), denounces the anti-women and genocidal policies of the Turkish AKP government. The women's movement demands that Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan be brought to justice for his crimes. Members of the Kurdish Society Center in Duisburg supported the rally.
The rally, which took place in the city center in front of the Forum Duisburg, called for support for a petition that runs until March 8 for the international recognition of femicide as a crime against humanity. Amara Çîya of the Asya Yüksel Women's Council drew attention in a speech to the increase in deadly violence against women in Turkey. Since the Islamist-oriented Erdoğan Party, or AKP, has ruled the country, the number of femicide has been on the rise. In 2002, at the beginning of the AKP era, statistics recorded 66 murders of women. In the past year, the platform "We will stop femicides" counted at least 300 femicides, and the women's news agency JinNews even recorded 332 cases in which women were murdered by men. Women's rights organizations primarily blame the Erdoğan regime's antisocial and war-oriented policies for the unprecedented rise in femicides.
With the "100 Reasons" campaign, TJK-E therefore demands that the Turkish president be tried as the main perpetrator of femicides. The number 100 is symbolic of the uncounted deaths in the soon-to-be 19 years of Erdoğan's government.
Rally on Saturday
The rally also addressed the situation of political prisoners in Turkey, who have been on hunger strike since November 27 against their complete disenfranchisement and the isolation regime on the prison island of Imrali, where PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan is isolated from the outside world. Amara Çîya called for participation in a rally to be held on Saturday (January 16) at 2 p.m. on Königstraße in Duisburg. The demo is intended to express solidarity with the political prisoners and to protest against the inhumane conditions in Turkish prisons. Another topic will be the political extermination campaign of the regime against the HDP and ESP.
