HDP highlights violence against women in first meeting

ANKARA

AA Photo

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has dedicated its first parliamentary group meeting to women’s rights during the first term of the national assembly after the Nov. 1 elections.

The meeting, which came only one day before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, only hosted the party’s female deputies and female visitors. 

The deputies carried photographs of murdered women. 

“The past six months have become a dark period in Turkey’s history,” said HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ said in her address, referring to the rising clashes in the southeast and east. 

 “Some 140 civilians have died since June 7 due to an unnamed war and violence policy,” she said, referring to the date of the first general elections that produced no majority government.
 
“Some 20 of these 140 people were women,” she said, adding that 26 of them were kids. 

“This is a picture painted by those who insist on violence and authoritarian policies in the name of public order,” she said. 

“Authorities divided the public. Politics of hate and lynching were used. Hate speech became dominant. For one purpose: the Presidency,” she said. 

Yüksekdağ said sticking to common sense was important after the downing of a Russian jet that violated the Turkish airspace by the Turkish military. “We have witnessed that the ‘politics of tension’ bring no benefits,” she said, calling on the government to take steps to ease regional tensions.