Many women against one man

Dilara KURTULUŞ - Member of the Left Feminist Movement

With the start of the new year, the government has continued its reactionary policies without slowing down, declaring 2025 the "Year of the Family." From the very beginning of the year, Erdoğan has repeatedly reminded us of this so-called "Year of the Family" at every podium, relentlessly reproducing misogynistic and hateful rhetoric, targeting us at every opportunity.

Recently, Kaos GL revealed the draft bill titled "The Draft Law Proposal on Amendments to the Turkish Penal Code and Certain Laws." According to its content, gender transition processes are being made more difficult, while homosexual life and “behaviours contrary to biological sex and 'public morality’” are being criminalised.

Both the "Year of the Family" and the proposed amendments to the penal code make it clear that they aim to subject women and LGBTQ+ individuals to shameless scrutiny over their behaviour in public spaces and their sexual and private lives. They want to use the law to make us the guilty party in every case of violence and harassment we suffer. They seek to suppress feminist organisations and silence the voices of women and LGBTQ+ individuals.

We could list numerous points about how AKP’s political Islamist regime builds its policies upon the bodies and lives of women and LGBTQ+ individuals, and how dangerous these policies are and will be for our lives. But I want to focus more on the state of “being us.”

At times, we have marched side by side for justice for our sisters who were murdered or subjected to abuse. Sometimes, we have stood together simply for the right not to be killed or harassed, sometimes to protect our rights, and sometimes to win new ones. Those whom the government sees as the “other” have, for years, stood shoulder to shoulder in the streets, in the squares, and on the barricades against the one-man rule, always looking out for one another.

We also know what we can achieve when we come together. Looking at the history of the feminist movement, we see that the greatest victories have always been won through the broadest possible solidarity among women. From the fight for voting rights to the right to abortion, from equality in the workplace to the struggle against violence, every achievement has been possible only through the collective resistance of women.

But today, we also know that our enemy is patriarchy, and its first step is the one-man regime. We know that the force that will dismantle this regime is the struggle of women. Therefore, what we need today is to seek the ground for a united struggle with a common political goal—against the common enemy, against the one-man regime.

For a long time, we have been in a defensive position against the government's attacks. But the only way forward is to move beyond this defensive stance and create a space where the demands of the women's movement, that is the largest opposition force, are integrated with the broader social opposition, with the clear objective of ending the one-man regime together.

We have no choice but to strengthen solidarity and fight together against those who seek to silence us. We are millions against the handful of tyrants trying to suffocate us. Against one man, we are many women.

Note: This article is translated from the original Turkish version titled Tek adama karşı çok kadın, published in BirGün newspaper on March 8, 2025.