A written statement was issued by PKK and PAJK women prisoners in Turkish prisons to mark 8 March, International Working Women's Day.

The statement said: “We, the women of the PKK and PAJK, who are in love with freedom and continue to resist and struggle in prisons, salute our Leader [Öcalan] who with great devotion to women has resurrected the lost Kurdish woman with unique efforts and brought her to this day.”

The statement added: “We maintain our strong belief and great hope that the universal struggle of women will create a free, democratic, ecological, free women world and life. Our prison history teaches us the culture of resistance. We will end the absolute isolation with our organized stance, participation and resistance. We can defeat this system by assimilating the Leader's ideology of women's liberation and the philosophy of freedom in the face of exploitation of women. We are faced with the responsibility of putting forward our claim of freedom in a stronger and more organized way at a time when violence and massacre against the whole society and women in particular are at their peak.”

The statement stressed that “women continue to resist greatly in the face of the male power attacking recklessly all over the world. Success is inevitable for women who become conscious, strengthen, organize, and carry out their self-defense with their organized struggle.

It is a historical fact that our Leader attributes the freedom of society to the freedom of women. The arrest and imprisonment of a 79-year-old Kurdish mother is the result of the fear of truth that surrounds the Turkish government. In order for our women's liberation struggle to grow further and make fascism fail, the KCK's ‘End Isolation, Fascism, Occupation. Time to Ensure Freedom’ initiative and KJK's ‘Time to Defend Free Women and Society’ will continue in prisons until isolation is lifted. We pay tribute and salute all our comrades who joined the caravan of martyrs of freedom and celebrate 8 March, International Working Women's Day. We celebrate the day of our mothers and all women whose labor is invaluable in Kurdistan and this land. As determined by our leadership, our claim to make the 21st century a woman's century is strong, our hope is great and alive. Victory always belongs to those who resist."