Former DTP co-chair Aysel Tuğluk is still being held in prison despite her medical reports proving that she is not medically fit to stay in prison.
She remains in Kocaeli Prison, Turkey, where she is serving a 10 year sentence in relation to speeches she made at various events and meetings, while receiving ongoing medication and treatment for her debilitating disease. Fifty seven year-old Aysel Tuğluk was diagnosed with dementia February 2021 while behind bars. She was arrested in December 2016, just days after the arrest of co chairs of the HDP at the time, Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş with several other HDP MPs.
As the protests in support of the women’s led uprisings in Iran spread around the world after the morality police of the Islamic Republic of Iran killed Jina Mahsa Amini, the role of women in the Middle East has become a sharp focus of discussion.
Aysel Tuğluk is the first co-chair of a party who has devoted her life to the women’s struggle combining it with the Kurdish struggle. She wrote a column in 25-31 August 2001 to Yedinci Gündem newspaper under the title of “The land – and woman – yearns for peace. Medyanews translated for its readers. The column is as follows:
Aysel Tuğluk
Life started with woman. The first producer was woman, humanity was equal and free. Woman started her history of incessant struggles when she was driven from the institution of life, and social, political and economic life was then painted in the colours of man.
When the language, emotions, values and culture of war became dominant in the whole world, what has been lost was woman, and what has disappeared was peace.
As the women of the lands where merciless wars prevailed, we yearned for peace. Was it only we who yearned for it? The land yearned for it, history yearned for it. But mostly a woman yearns for it. A woman knew that she would find the love and the justice she had lost when she found peace. Yearning for it was not enough. As the hard rules of war surrounded consciences, fossilising them, as hearts and the meaning of life were lost and as violence and hatred surrounded us on all sides, it was necessary to start the struggle for peace. We have our reasons, history, that day, the future forced us into this.
Our woman’s hearts did not accept war, and while living the greatest war we established our land and peace in our world. As we came to see and understand that equal and free relationships could be established with peace, we marched for peace, always for peace. We knew that sovereignty based on domination, force and pressure brought about depersonalisation and enslavement and rendered woman powerless and debilitated.
First a woman was hit. She was caused to fall and woman and humanity became engulfed in an intense darkness. This is how the history of war began to be written. Some people wrote the wars, but it was we who lived them. The bitter face of war hit woman the hardest. We had nothing to do with the creation of war but we were required to pay the price. As we paid the price of war, we did not allow feelings of revenge and hatred to enter our world. And we cried the strongest cries for peace everywhere, in every place. Our mothers buried their pain in their heart. Even before arriving at their children’s graves to find them they were seeking peace. And they chased after peace with passion.
The peace march is tough
No-one wanted to go through the pain they went through. Pain was postponed for peace. Despite everything the war could not soil their hearts. They protected their purity, their sublimity, their sorarity, not allowing them to be stained by dirty wars. And when the notice of peace, the shouts of peace arose, it was woman who first wanted to hear this sound. She knew that unsoiled awareness and unsoiled spirits would comprehend peace. The first call was to woman. And woman heard, felt, understood the call. She knew that the peace march was tough. And it was required of woman that she be the voice of freedom, courage, love and justice in the face of thousands of years of domination, with the reality that the strongest lights originate from the deepest darkness.
Being the voice of great yearning could be achieved not through a simple life, but through an exalted life. It was required of a woman that she accept the challenge of a great fight as a force requiring peace and democracy to be brought onto the agenda more than anything else, for the sake of an exalted life, a life of peace. It has been said, “You can suffer pain, you can starve, you can be left alone”. But freedom had a price like this. This was the only way to liberate passion, love and peace.
The march to meet with the essence of humanity
And the peace march started on these sacred lands with a woman. She felt the peace that was the essence of the land. This was the powerful peace march of a people that has been in war for years. The woman’s peace march was the march to meet with the lost essence of humanity. This road should be travelled with labour and enthusiasm, courage, self-confidence and knowledge. With peace that was the free sharing of life, the lost woman would be brought back. The relationship between life and woman, life and peace was so closely entwined. They presented war as fate, but it was not fate. Peace was not an unrealisable dream. They wanted us to forget peace. But the land yearned for peace. And woman yearned for it. And the root released the plane trees of peace to these lands. And the knowledge of peace began to explain peace to the woman.
The land yearned for it, history yearned for it
As the women of the lands where merciless wars prevailed, we yearned for peace. Was it only we who yearned for it? The land yearned for it, history yearned for it. But mostly the woman yearns for it. A woman knew that she would find the love and the justice she had lost when when she found peace. Yearning for it was not enough. As the hard rules of war surrounded consciences, fossilising them, as hearts and the meaning of life were lost and as violence and hatred surrounded us on all sides, it was necessary to start the struggle for peace. We have our reasons, history, that day, the future forced us into this. Our woman’s hearts did not accept war, and while living the greatest war we established our land and peace in our world. As we came to see and understand that equal and free relationships could be established with peace, we marched for peace, always for peace. We knew that sovereignty based on domination, force and pressure brought about depersonalisation and enslavement and rendered the woman powerless and debilitated.
The call came first to a woman…
And when the notice of peace, the shouts of peace arose it was the woman who first wanted to hear this sound. She knew that unsoiled awareness and unsoiled spirits would comprehend peace. The first call was to the woman. And the woman heard, felt, understood the call. She knew that the peace march was hard. And it was required of a woman that she be the voice of freedom, courage, love and justice in the face of thousands of years of domination, with the reality that the strongest lights originate from the deepest darkness.
*This article first appeared in Yedinci Gündem issue 25-31 August 2001
