On August 12, Paula Maier publicly revealed for the first time that she had been raped by Turkish officials while in deportation detention in January of this year.
When the HTS, with the help of the fascist Turkish state, launched a major offensive against the autonomous administration of Rojava at the beginning of the year, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets — whether in Rojava, Bakur, or Europe. They stood against the massive violence and against the fact that, within a very short period of time, thousands of people were abducted, murdered in the streets, and women were kidnapped. To this day, hundreds of people in Syria remain missing.
In light of this situation, activists from Europe travelled to Kurdistan, including, among others, as part of the Peoples Caravan delegations. Paula Maier, a member of the Federation of Class-Struggle Organizations, was part of such a delegation and travelled to Bakur (Northern Kurdistan) together with other activists and journalists. There, they took part in actions in solidarity with the Kurdish liberation struggle and reported on the situation on the ground. The fascist Turkish state arrested the delegation after five days. Following their return, numerous reports of torture and sexualized violence in deportation detention centers became public.
Beatings to the point of unconsciousness, braided hair being ripped out and rubbed against guards’ crotches, and mass harassment. Paula Maier has now revealed that she was tortured and raped by Turkish officials while being held in deportation detention at Istanbul Airport. Numerous young women reported that, inspired by and hopeful in the spirit of the women’s revolution, they wanted to turn their solidarity into concrete action by participating in delegations to Kurdistan. In this sense, they continue to resist the violence they face in detention today.
PATRIARCHAL VIOLENCE IN DETENTION AS A POLITICAL BATTLEGROUND
Patriarchal sexualized violence has long been used as a means of breaking the will of prisoners in detention, destroying their fighting spirit and resistance. Sexualized torture is a specific instrument in this regard, intended to surround political prisoners with a network of shame in an attempt to isolate them. The history of Turkish prisons has shown that the fascist Turkish state considers any method of torture acceptable in pursuit of its goals — including rape in detention. Women in particular, LGBTI+ people, revolutionaries, Kurds, and all those who support the Kurdish liberation struggle are subjected to this massive torture.
Paula’s statement once again confirms the experiences of thousands of political prisoners who have endured sexualized torture in Turkish detention. Yet women from Turkey and Kurdistan in particular have increasingly declared patriarchal violence in detention to be a political battleground. Women have gone public with their experiences, rejected the social shame imposed on them, and instead initiated a broader social struggle led by women. This culminated, among other things, in a major conference against sexual torture in detention, organized in Turkey in the year 2000 by the Federation of Working Women (EKB), at which hundreds of women participated and shared their experiences.
Paula Maier’s publication is part of the struggle of courageous women who refuse to be broken by repression. On the contrary, they transform their experiences into political struggle and thereby expose the true character of the fascist Turkish state. At the same time, it is part of the worldwide struggle against sexualized torture in detention — including the struggle against torture by the Syrian and Israeli states.
With every testimony that is made public and every woman who raises her voice against this form of torture, we take another step forward against repression and create new collective courage.
As TSP, we stand in full solidarity with Paula Maier and all other political prisoners who have experienced torture and sexualized violence in prison. We call on everyone to organize actions in solidarity and to become active in the struggle against sexualized torture and repression!
Justice for Paula!
Justice for all!