23/12/2020 | Writer: Kaos GL
Outcome Report of the “Solidarity Beyond Borders” panel is out!
Illustration: Semih Özkarakaş
As the Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways Association and Kaos GL Association, we met at the 2-day Solidarity Keeps Alive Workshop in Istanbul between November 8-9, 2019 to talk about how to organize a joint fight as feminists and LGBTI+ activists against the right-wing conservative organizations, which have been working increasingly organized in recent years and expressing their opposition to gender equality.
The meeting, in which we discussed topics such as media, law, activism, local politics/organization, academia/education, international advocacy, was organized within the scope of the One Day One Struggle campaign on November 9 which is designated as an international joint action day by the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR), of which both associations are members.
After this workshop, we, as two associations, continued our cooperation and solidarity in the thematic areas of the workshop. In the workshop, we continued to say “Solidarity Keeps Alive” in line with the road map we created for ourselves. One of the concrete examples of this was the "How did the Diyanet's khutbah reflect on the media?" workshop on October 22,2020. In this online workshop, 25 journalists, writers, feminists and LGBTI+ activists, discussed the media reflections of the Religious Affairs Administration's (Diyanet) Friday khutbah, targeting LGBTI+'s, those living with HIV and anyone, especially women, who has extramarital sexual intercourse.
As the two associations, we came together again on November 9 this year in order to expand our solidarity beyond borders and to say solidarity knows no borders. We organized the panel "Solidarity Beyond Borders" to discuss the global attacks on LGBTI+ and women's rights, the methods of resistance against these attacks and to "be inspired" by the activism that transcends borders.
Tags: human rights, women
