ŞIRNAK - Stating that an important aspect of the state's attacks in Cizre is sexist, Nebahat İşçi said that they want to destroy a struggle through the female body.

 

Hundreds of people were massacred in the curfews declared by the Şırnak Governorate in 2015 and 2016 in the center of Şırnak and in the districts of Cizre, Silopi and İdil, and the blockades that followed throughout the region. In Cizre, 177 people were murdered and then burned in the basement of three different buildings that went down in history as “basements of brutality” in front of the whole world. In the city where thousands of houses were burned and destroyed, one of the targets of the state was women. The sexist graffitis on the streets and houses, the dead bodies that were displayed with photos and videos recorded by soldiers, and the damage to women's private belongings in the bedrooms were the most concrete indications of this. After the bans, which are a concrete reflection of the masculine rape culture of the state, women who were subjected to sexual harassment on the streets were also harassed by phone calls.

 

In the city, where fascism and male-dominated state have been taking revenge, especially on women, women took to the streets after the curfews and bans, rolled up their sleeves for rebuilding life and claimed their neighborhoods.

 

IT'S A SHAME

 

One of the house filled with graffitis made by soldiers was the house of Nebahat İşçi. Stating that social and moral values ​​were trampled on during the curfews, İşçi said that they will never forget what they have been through.

 

Stating that they went back to their homes after the ban was lifted, İşçi said, "We had to leave the neighborhood after the ban was announced in Cizre. We returned to our home when the bans were lifted. We found out that our house was stormed by soldiers. They defecated in our pots and put them in the fridge. What we saw was not the work of a human being. It was a shame."

 

THE REFLECTION OF STATE MIND 

 

Stating that the state mind was trying to undermine and insult the struggle of a people through female body and women have been resisting against it, İşçi said: "They wrote sexist things on our walls. They threw women's clothes on the floor and took pictures with them. How can a person do this? Scattering woman's clothes on the floor and take pictures with them? Those sexist graffitis on our mirrors in bedrooms was the clearest form of this state mind. Nobody saw or experienced what we women have experienced during the curfews. This sexist, racist mentality still continues. Such a mentality was not just written on the walls, we experienced it in practice. We  witnessed it. Knowing that women were leading the struggle, they attacked the women. Because they know that if women are liberated, the society becomes liberated, and if the society becomes liberated, the peoples become liberated."

 

 

MA / Zeynep Durgut