İSTANBUL - Feminist Hülya Osmanağaoğlu, who participated in the Middle East and North Africa Women's Conference, said, "The equivalent of the voice that rose from the Feminist Night March and March 8 rose in the Middle East and North Africa."

 

The second of the Middle East and North Africa Women's Conference, which was first held in Diyarbakir in May 2013, was held in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, on 30-31 July this year. The echoes of the conference, where the establishment of a  women's alliance was decided, continue. The conference is important in terms of determining the common struggle strategies of Middle Eastern and North African women's organizations.

 

We talked to the independent feminist Hülya Osmanağaoğlu, who attended the conference from the Turkish delegation, about the importance of the conference, the decisions taken and the women's struggle.

 

UNITY FOR DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION

 

Stating that the women talked about the problems they experienced and how they came together in the struggle, Osmanağaoğlu stated that they emphasized the need for women to come together and fight together for the democratic revolution. Evaluating the decision taken at the conference to form a women's alliance, Osmanağaoğlu said, "By seeing how societies are affected by each other, how the feminist struggle strengthens women beyond borders, a framework was created on issues women should take action simultaneously.

 

REPRESENTATION IN THE POLITICAL AREA

 

Stating that the oppression of political Islam and secularism were widely discussed at the conference, Osmanağaoğlu said that the debates on how women's representation in the political field should be was among the striking issues. Osmanağaoğlu said the following about the debates: “The most striking feminist emphasis for me was that it doesn't matter how many women hold office in the Parliament, what matters is how many feminist women were in those assemblies to defend women's rights. Not only a women's representation, but also the representation of women in the political arena, as we have seen here with our friends from the Kurdish movement, was insistently emphasized. We must be involved in this struggle and have political representation. The emphasis was on feminist representation, not parliamentary representation. An important issue for me is that women from all countries stated that it is important that the legitimacy of the feminist struggle is strong in order to build real democracies in their own countries. They said that real democracies could only be built for the whole society at the point where women are liberated."

 

WOMEN'S RESISTANCE

 

Evaluating the importance of the conference and the impact it will create, Osmanağaoğlu emphasized that the conference is important in terms of showing how strong the women's struggle in the Middle East and Africa is despite the increasing pressure from patriarchy. Stating that this situation lifts the spirits, Osmanağaoğlu said, “We see how tens of thousands of women who took to the streets during the Feminist Night March regressed patriarchy. We are on the right track. The oppressive system, fascism, political and Islamic oppressions can all be regressed through the struggle of women. In fact, when we look at the women's struggles in the Middle East and North Africa, we see that there is resistance everywhere and that the most powerful steps forward are taken.”

 

MOST DYNAMIC FORCE OF SOCIAL OPPOSITION

 

Osmanağaoğlu said, “The strongest and broadest area of ​​legitimacy of the social opposition is the feminist movement at the moment" and said, "The equivalent of the voice that rose from the Feminist Night March and March 8 rose in the Middle East and North Africa."

 

ROJAVA WOMEN'S REVOLUTION

 

Stating that the Women's Revolution in Rojava was widely mentioned in the conference is a model on the women's empowerment and how it should actually be, Osmanağaoğlu said: "The model that goes beyond the model democratic revolution in Northern and Eastern Syria, that is, not only legal rights, but also women's empowerment against men in the home, protecting their rights at home. In this sense, the democratic revolution in North and East Syria shows how the next step of democratic revolution must be."

 

MA / Diren Yurtsever