The calendars are showing that fateful day again. We are surrounded by celebratory messages of dubious sincerity, flowers being handed out at every corner and the noise of brands that see the word “woman” only as a marketing strategy. However, the shattered mirror in this image is a stark reminder of reality: We are women, broken in every part but still trying to stand, each part telling a different story.
March 8th is not a “flower day” as it is commonly believed. This date was born from the ashes of 129 working women who died in 1857 after being locked in a textile factory in New York. Their demand was not flowers, but a life and labor worthy of human dignity. Today, that fire has been replaced by other fires.
Thousands of women are murdered every year in Turkey under the shadow of “male justice”. Girls whose lives are taken away from them at a young age, women trapped in hellish marriages due to economic impossibilities and social pressures, silent screams who have to submit to violence because they have nowhere to go... While we carry this heavy burden on our shoulders, we see the deep emptiness created by those who say “women's rights” in the window.
It is one of the greatest ironies of history that “professional associations” that do not speak out against the oppression I face as a woman journalist trying to do my job with dignity, and even applaud the perpetrators of that oppression, stand up today and publish March 8 messages. Every structure that creates a space for itself by using the name of women, makes non-governmental organizations a gateway to personal fortune and exploits this sacred cause for its own interests is actually the biggest betrayer of this struggle.
As someone who has opened doors for women who could not leave their homes, guided those who could not continue their education, and opened a space for women to have a voice in civil society, I cry out with a loud voice today: “You defend my right!”
If you remember being a woman only on special occasions, if your “advocacy” serves only your own circle and interests, if you smile at the perpetrators of injustice while a female colleague is being wronged; do not speak of my right, my name, my pain.
We don't have a day to celebrate; we have an honor to defend, a future to win and a will that maintains its integrity even though every part of it is broken. Do not disrespect the real ground of March 8th, that great resistance. You owe us honesty and sincerity, not flowers.
We have learned to defend our own rights with our own voice, with our own shattered images. We will rewrite our own integrity, our own ‘name’, by bringing together the embers from that fire, each piece of that shattered mirror. Today we commemorate, we hold to account and we resist. Because we are pieces of this mirror and each of us is a whole.
Love