100 reasons to prosecute the dictator
Einladung Vorbereitungstreffen für die Kurdistanwoche 2022
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From the recent history of humanity, we know that nothing has lead to more catastrophe in human history than dictatorial regimes. As we know from the Armenian Genocide, from Holocaust, from the settler colonial genocides against indigenous peoples in the Americas, as well as from the many massacres in places like Middle East, including Kurdistan, humanity has had to cope with all sorts of genocides, especially in the past two centuries.
According to the definition of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide “means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” The widely accepted definition of dictatorship describes a ruler’s monopolization/concentration of power in their hands to uphold themselves as the supreme leader.
These definitions according to international legal norms give us enough reason to suggest that Erdoğan is a dictator and that he should be prosecuted for his crimes. The dictator, who operates as the president of Turkey, has a male-dominated, fascist and racist mentality that targets Kurdish women in a conscious, planned and specific way. In 18 years of AKP rule, Erdoğan has become the main perpetrator behind the system of conscious massacre, killing and rape on women
On October 29, 2009, 12 year-old Ceylan was killed by a Turkish army howitzer, while pasturing sheep. On January 9th, 2013, Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan, and Leyla Şaylemez were assassinated in Paris by the Turkish intellgince. Kader Ortakaya was shot in the head in November 2014, while trying to cross into Kobane during the siege of Daesh. Young activist Dilek Doğan was assassinated in her house by the police on October 18th, 2015. In December 2015, the dead body of Taybet Inan, a civilian killed by the Turkish armed forces, was left to rot in the streets during the curfew in Silopi. On January 4th, Kurdish women’s activists Seve Demir, Pakize Nayır, and Fatma Uyar were massacred by army fire in Silopi under army siege. On October 12, 2019, Kurdish women’s activist and politician Hevrin Xelef was murdered by Turkish-backed Islamist forces in the Turkish state’s ‘Peace Spring’ Operation in Serekaniye (Ras al-Ain) in Northern Syria. Lawyer Ebru Timtik died on August 27, 2020 on the 238th day of her hunger strike for a just court proceeding. In June 2020, three Kurdish women activists of the umbrella women’s movement Kongreya Star were murdered in a Turkish drone strike on a house in the Helince village of Kobane, Northern Syria. There are many more examples.
Violence against women has risen by more than one thousand percent in Turkey. Rape is increasingly normalized. Women are systematically excluded from political spheres (including imprisonment). All this in addition to the criminalization of academic, artistic and professional work.
Our memory and anger are alive because we face another massacre every day. We have the power to hold the perpetrators accountable. We have sufficient reasons and evidence to that end. We also have enough consciousness and foundations to know that these are all war crimes.
As the Kurdish women’s movement, we have been struggling through campaigns, actions and resistance against feminicide in our country. With our campaign “100 reasons to prosecute the dictator”, we will stand up against the main perpetrator of these crimes, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Without a doubt, in his 18 years in power, Erdoğan has not committed 100, but hundreds of crimes. However, as women, we decided to focus on the heinous crimes without whose confrontation our conscience cannot find peace.
We will not formulate a sentence like ‘The number of incidents and deaths is impossible to count’. As women, we do not only condemn these crimes with the help of the evidence we collected. We also condem them with our form, consciousnes, stance and claims. We do not want Erdoğan to be like others, who were always seen as ‘state leaders’, and as ‘dictators’ only after their war crimes have been exposed or after they have died. We want him to be prosecuted now. Our list of Erdoğan’s crimes is long enough and we do not want it to get even bigger.
As the Kurdish Women’s Movement in Europe (TJK-E) we want to collect 100.000 signatures for 100 reasons to oppose the dictator and his mercenaries in their use law, military and the police for violence and injustice.
In the first phase of our campaign, in the 104 days that pass between 25 November 2020 and 8 March 2021, we will give another “reason” every day, by sharing the stories of women, who were murdered by the state. Against the dictator, who manages to commit new massacres every day, we will tell you about the women, who have been murdered. We want them to enter the pages of history and the memory of humanity forever.
The signatures that we will collect will constitute the first step towards laying the foundations for the legal, social, political and action-based works that we will engage in, in our quest to prosecute the dictator. In the second phase, we will take our signatures and the incidents we logged, and all the evidence we collected to the UN and other relevant institutions to demand the beginning of the process of recognizing feminicide as a crime similar to genocide. The UN’s failure to do what is necessary encourages dictators like Erdoğan, who represent the institutionalized form of the male dominated mentality.
Each signature we collect will take us one step closer to prosecuting the dictator, while each voice we raise in action will narrow the space available to dictators.
You can add power to our power, your voice to our voice to remove the dictator from our life by taking place in this campaign at www.100-reasons.org.

100.000 signatures for 100 reasons
Erdoğan and the AKP should be prosecuted for their feminicidal policies!
Once upon a time, the AKP promised to meaningfully democratize Turkey, to implement rule of law norms, to solve domestic issues such as the Kurdish question by political means, to build a pluralistic, democratic parliamentary system, with zero tolerance for torture, and zero problems with neighboring countries. For years, these promises raised expectations for the urgent demands for change made by society. Among the promises were the struggle against sexism and for gender equality.
In the 18 years of AKP rule, Turkey not only did not fulfil these promises; it took steps back in time in an unprecedented way.
Together with its coalition partner, the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the government established a fascist/dictatorial one-man rule, seizing control over all bodies of the state, removing freedom of thought and expression, turning the justice system into the greatest vehicle for injustice, and dismantling the division of powers.
The Erdoğan government recklessly uses all resources of the state against those who oppose its rule. It tries to eliminate all opposition through killing, imprisonment, torture, forced displacement and expropriation. People are further silenced through threats of being sacked, by intimidation, and blackmailing.
Domestically, the Erdoğan government has turned the country into an open prison, a regime of fear with dictatorial methods. Parallel to this, the state has resorted to more aggression and blackmail in its foreign policy than ever before. Although the government had promised ‘zero problems with neighbors’, the country now has problems with nearly everyone in the region and beyond. In its quest for regional hegemony based on neo-Ottoman dreams, the AKP leads wars in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. It frequently uses Daesh and similar groups as mercenaries for occupation. It regularly uses blackmail as part of its foreign policy in order to get its will across (the so-called refugee deal with the EU is a case in point). At this point, Turkey under the AKP presents a threat and danger to the entire region. We are aware of these developments to the extent to which they are covered in the press. However there is another dangerous war led by the AKP that is widely unreported in the media and absent from world gendas: a feminicidal war on women!
AKP and women
With the increasingly aggressive nature of the domestic and foreign policies of the Erdoğan government, feminicidal policies increased as well. With its feminicidal policies, the AKP is also leading a ‘societicidal’ policy. Fascism, as the most deeply male-dominated system, can only continue its existence by deeping the colonized state of women. Turkey is the country with the most women political prisoners. During the AKP government, violence against women has increased by 1400%. The explosion of femicides and violence against women is not a coincidence, nor is it disconnected from state policies. In regions under Turkish state occupation, women are kidnapped, raped, sold, and massacred. There is a serious attack on women’s willpower and ability to decide over their own life. Women are objectified and pushed into traditional gender roles. Women constantly face suffocation by the state and the patriarchal society it reproduces.
Like everywhere else in the world, women constitute an important oppositional dynamic in Turkey. The Kurdish Women’s Movement is at the forefront of a serious women’s awakening. It is not a coincidence that Erdoğan’s feminicidal policies increase with each day in which this awakening grows. With feminicide, the state is trying to eliminate opposition and thereby any prospective force of change. The aim is to hold society hostage.
The fact that feminicide is still not recognized as a crime against humanity means that states and dictators that resort to feminicide are not afraid of being held accountable.
As long as feminicide is not treated as a crime against humanity, it will not be possible to lead a credible and efficient struggle against societicidal policies such as genocide.
With this campaign, we want to expose and draw attention to the feminicidal policies of the AKP. We want to seek justice and demand a prosecution of Erdoğan. With this effort, we want to be the voice for all women in the world, who are subjected to violence and draw attention to all state crimes committed against women.
We want to put an end to the violence against women committed in the Turkish Republic on a feminicidal scale, where one woman is killed by male violence every day.
With this campaign, we want Feminicide to be internationally recognized as a crime against humanity. Add your signature to our demands. No passage to feminicide.