Perihan Kaya-Eylem Daş/JINHA

ISTANBUL – Women are preparing for Istanbul’s International Workers’ Day rally in Taksim Square. They say they will be out resisting in the square in spite of the ruling AKP’s attempt to silence women workers.

Freedom and Solidarity Party General Co-Chair Seçkin Çetinkaya points out that women will be the ones resisting the most fiercely on May 1 because “we are the ones at the bottom of this system.” She says women will be out resisting despite the AKP attempt to push women out of the square.

The AKP announced in recent years that May 1 rallies would be forbidden from taking place in downtown Istanbul’s Taksim Square. Instead, the ruling party attempted to redirect workers to an empty concrete plot in a deserted industrial neighborhood. Istanbul celebration has historically been one of Turkey’s biggest events of workers’ rebellion.

“We think we should be able to take to the historic square. But it’s hard; there’s been a declaration of battle. Every year, the square turns into a war zone,” she said. “And it looks like it will be that way this year, too. But we won’t give up our rights.”

Nebile Irmak Çetin, chair of the Istanbul branch of service and housing workers’ union Genel İş Konut Sendikası, noted that the AKP’s policy of reducing women to the role of housewives has worsened conditions for women workers.

“AKP power works to push women out of working life, social life, and public space and imprison them in the home,” she said. She called the party’s employment law “a policy to enslave women and force them to birth babies.” Women make up around half of the workers employed under the subcontracting system that the AKP has pushed on public workers, which hyper-exploits women workers. Between the enforced poor working conditions for women workers and the policies forcing women into motherhood, the AKP has created a system that forces women workers into “the most exhausting, dirty and difficult jobs,” says Nebile.

Women workers’ program for International Workers’ Day will bring together women workers—from those who work in the home as housewives to those hyper-exploited under the subcontracting system—to leave carnations at sites where working women have died on the job.

(dc/fk/cm)