To the Streets on March 8: For Struggle and Solidarity!
This system advises us to be patient, to remain silent, and to submit to our fate. But we say: “We will overthrow your system that brings destruction and poverty!”
An equal and free world will not emerge on its own. That world will rise through the collective struggle built against exploitation, violence, and domination. Let us expand our struggle so that not one more life is lost, and so that we can build a free and equal future!
March 8 is a historic day of struggle on which working women rise up against exploitation and domination. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the resistance of women workers in textile factories, against low wages, long working hours, and inhumane conditions, laid the foundations of today’s women’s struggle. That resistance continues today against a system of exploitation whose roots run deep.
Capitalist relations of production and the patriarchal social order have become intertwined, forming a mechanism of domination that feeds and reinforces itself. While capitalism organizes labor processes, it also structures the family, gender roles, and bodies within certain norms. Imperialist wars, racist and sexist policies impose new attacks, new destruction, and social collapse upon us every day as if they were our “fate.” Yet we have nothing to lose but our chains in the face of this system!
Women in the Shadow of War
Women and children pay the heaviest price in imperialist wars. As a result of the genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza, tens of thousands of women and children have been massacred and continue to be massacred. With the support of the racist and sexist Trump, attacks spreading to Lebanon and Syria, and most recently the bombing of Iran under the pretexts of nuclear weapons and “democracy”, are condemning the region to constant devastation.
We stand with the freedom struggle waged for years by Iranian women against the mullah regime. However, we categorically reject the overthrow of a regime through imperialist intervention and the puppet governments that such interventions attempt to establish. Iranian women must determine their own fate.
The Rising Tide of Conservatism and the Balance Sheet of the “Sacred Family”
The growing political and social conservatism of recent years has further strengthened this system of control. Through policies such as the “sacred family” and the “year of the family,” the lives of women and LGBTI+ people are being placed under surveillance through the discourse of “morality.” Turkiye withdrew overnight from the Istanbul Convention, while Law No. 6284, which protects women, children, and LGBTI+ individuals, is not effectively implemented. The state’s policy of “protecting the family” has become an ideological shield for a system that in reality leaves women defenseless.
In January 2026, 22 women were killed by men, while 14 women were found dead under suspicious circumstances. In February, six women were murdered in a single day. Women are being killed in the streets, in their homes, right beside us, because they resist harassment and violence, because they want a divorce, or because they attempt to assert control over their own lives.
The deaths of Fatmanur Çelik, who was raped at a young age by a director of the “Quran Service Foundation” and then forced into marriage, and of eight-year-old Hifa, who had been abused by her own father since the age of three, have filled us with both grief and rage. Fatmanur, whose rapist was not arrested and who held a vigil for justice for weeks, left us with the words: “If they say I committed suicide, do not believe them.” These words still echo in our memory. This system does not protect women, it kills them!
Patriarchal capitalism targets not only women but all bodies that fall outside normative gender roles. Femicides, murders of trans people, and systematic violence against LGBTI+ individuals are the most naked expressions of this disciplinary mechanism. This violence is not merely the result of individual hatred; it is the product of a social machinery that seeks to preserve the normative gender order.
Proposed provisions targeting LGBTI+ people that were to be added to judicial reform packages were withdrawn through the power of collective solidarity. Yet we will not allow any similar attempts, aimed at criminalizing rights defenders, imposing prison sentences, and making gender transition processes impossible, to pass.
The Unity of the Struggles for Labor and Bodily Autonomy
The liberation of women and LGBTI+ people cannot be achieved solely through identity-based rights struggles; it also requires the transformation of capitalist relations of exploitation. The control exercised over bodies and the exploitation of labor are two sides of the same coin. For this reason, domination over bodies is not merely a cultural issue but also an economic one. The slogan “Our labor, our bodies, our identities belong to us!” is not simply a demand for individual freedom; it is a political challenge directed at capitalist relations of production.
Our Struggle Against the Exploitation of Our Labor Is Growing
The unpaid reproduction of care work, the concentration of women in flexible and precarious employment, and the exclusion and criminalization of LGBTI+ individuals are key mechanisms of the global order of patriarchal capitalism. The capitalist system systematically devalues women’s labor. Women are often concentrated in the most precarious jobs, while the burden of domestic care is placed upon them, rendering this labor invisible.
Women workers employed in municipalities; those working night shifts in schools, hospitals, and warehouse markets; those whose labor in cleaning and care work is ignored, are no longer bowing their heads. In workplaces such as Submed, Sarıyer Municipality, Digel, Temel Conta, and Migros, they are resisting layoffs and precarious conditions, organizing, and winning their rights through struggle.
Migrant women workers face the harshest forms of this exploitation. Forced into informal employment, migrant women are condemned to much lower wages. From domestic care work to textile workshops, migrant labor is intensively exploited. Bringing migrant women and LGBTI+ workers into the struggle of the working class is of vital importance.
The Unions Are Ours!
As struggle grows, unionization rates continue to decline. Women’s unionization rates are even lower because they are concentrated in precarious and subcontracted jobs. Restrictions on membership, legal thresholds, and bans on strikes effectively block organizing. When combined with the distrust created by union bureaucracy, unions fail to become a sufficient center of attraction for workers.
We cannot abolish gender inequality by separating it from class relations. As long as the monopoly of capitalist power remains in the hands of the bourgeois class, genuine equality cannot be achieved. Without the overthrow of male-dominated capitalism and the establishment of a classless, exploitation-free order based on gender equality, full liberation will not be possible.
This system advises us to be patient, to remain silent, and to submit to our fate. But we say: “We will overthrow your system that brings destruction and poverty!”
An equal and free world will not emerge on its own. That world will rise through the collective struggle built against exploitation, violence, and domination. Let us expand our struggle so that not one more life is lost, and so that we can build a free and equal future!
Our Labor, Our Bodies, Our Identities Belong to Us!
Long Live March 8!
Long Live Our United Struggle!
First published here by Marksizm Şimdi
