Blue Stocking Women

Dear Sister,
I am writing to you from Ankara-Turkey. We are a group of feminist women
calling ourselves "The Blue Stocking Women's Collective".

We are mainly interested in the issue of violence against women. We did some
publishing (The Blue Stocking Circular Violence Against Women), and we are
involved in some campaigns (one is against virginity control and the other is
about peace) with other women's groups.

Recently, we were very disturbed about the armed conflict happening in
Turkey.  Hundreds of women had to move from their hometowns to the big cities
and are living under very hard conditions with their children. Using violence
against others has become very legitimate, so women and children are
suffering from it the most, in both sides.

In June 1994, some unknown people killed a 16-year-old woman and her father,
because she wanted to marry a soldier.  She was Kurdish and the soldier was
Turkish. They shot her many times in the lower part of her body. The desire
of controlling women's body is getting stronger.

We are trying to work out some resistence against war with other sensitive
groups, some greens, some socialists, and some anarchists. We have been
working on a peace campaign for the last three months. We are going to do
some activities starting from September lst, the Peace Day.

Manifesto
We are men, women and institutions who reject all wars in the world and want
the war which prevails in all corners of our country to stop immediately.

While the war causes massive deaths for both parties, it develops a mentality
intolerant to the differences in other regions which are not directly
involved. Every man and woman who remains silent in the face of this
situation has a responsibilty in the persistence of the war, willingly or
unwillingly.

We, men and women saying no to the war, to the discrimination of sex and
race, to the militarism and chauvinism, came together with the aim of
organizing a number of activities all over Turkey. We determined the outlines
of the campaign and completed graphical works, efforts which took two months.

Invitation to join the peace campaign
Participants of the Peace Tree Campaign invite, in the framework of the above
stated aims, every group and individual to:
1. participate in the common activities to be performed with the name of the
Peace Tree platform.
2. organize their own activities using their own names and the Peace Tree.
3. participate in other activities to be organized under other names and with
the use of the Peace Tree.

We are not interested in pleasing any political party or institution. Our
sole aim is to assure that the war and its effects stop immediately.

We don't want to kill and to be killed anymore; and we say that, "It is now
time to plant a Peace Tree".
Peace and Love,
Fahrunnisa Ekren
Adakale Sokak, 22/22 Kizilay, Ankara, Turkey.
Ph: 312-435 61 86