Erdoğan Will Never Defeat the Fight for Democracy in Turkey
Sebahat Tuncel is an MP for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) who has spent almost five years in Turkish jail on fabricated terrorism charges. She writes from prison on how President Erdoğan is using the courts to suppress dissent — and why Kurdish and democratic forces will never give in to his regime.
Sebahat Tuncel, who has currently been in jail for almost five years, after being freed from a jail in Gebze, Turkey, in 2007. (SEZAKI ERKEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Does the law really do justice? Who makes the law? Is everything legal really fair?
We can go on asking questions like this. Who does the law protect? The laws of the male-dominated capitalist system exclude women from social and public life and impose the system of slavery. The law was created to protect capital, patriarchy, and the state. It denies freedom to the working poor, women, believers, and those in need of rights and liberties.
Of course, throughout history, poor working people, women, and faith-based groups have fought these laws. This fight has helped to guarantee individual and collective rights and international conventions. Nevertheless, a free, equal, and democratic legal system has not yet been put in place. Nation-states frequently contradict their own laws in pursuit of their interests. This is clearly apparent in the policies of oppression, persecution, and violence against the Kurdish people in Turkey.
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