09/12/2025 | Writer: Kaos GL
Co-Chair of the DEM Party Tülay Hatimoğulları spoke at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey during the debate on the Budget Bill.
Co-Chair of the DEM Party Tülay Hatimoğulları spoke yesterday at the Plenary Session of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey about the 2026 Central Government Budget Bill.
In her speech, Hatimoğulları outlined the party’s minimum democratic program. Stating that the peace process is “a process of building the democratic republic with the broadest social unity,” Hatimoğulları emphasized that the right to equal citizenship must be secured under the constitution.
Saying, “A budget or a policy that disregards the right to life and freedoms of women, LGBTI+ people, youth, and children cannot be democratic,” Hatimoğulları added:
“As the DEM Party, we would like to briefly summarize the minimum democratic program that will be for the benefit of this country: Ensuring peace and a democratic solution. This country no longer wants to bear the burden of the order of conflict. Peace is the most humane demand of these lands and must be realized. The democratic solution of the Kurdish question and ensuring constitutional guarantees for peoples and freedoms are in all of our common interest. Second, the democratic republic and equal citizenship. What Turkey needs is not conflict, polarization, and discrimination; it is the constitutional guarantee of the right to equal citizenship. Third, gender equality and a life of freedom. A budget or a policy that disregards the right to life and freedoms of women, LGBTI+ people, youth, and children cannot be democratic. Gender must be a founding principle of free and democratic life.”
“Mechanisms that strengthen gender equality have been weakened”
Emphasizing that social inequalities have increased, Hatimoğulları said in her speech:
“Dear women; social inequalities, male violence, femicides, and suspicious deaths of women are rapidly increasing. The judiciary continues to protect men. The government’s attacks on women’s gains continue. Women are subjected to mobbing in workplaces. Women’s unemployment and the burden of care work at home are steadily increasing. The number of women working insecurely in unregistered workshops is steadily increasing. In Dilovası, women die by burning in a perfume workshop. Mechanisms that strengthen gender equality have been weakened.”
“Our struggle is a very important building block in constructing a democratic society”
Speaking about the importance of a gender-responsive budget, Hatimoğulları said:
“Our struggle is a very important building block in constructing a democratic society. One of the fundamental pillars of a democratic social contract is the production of gender-sensitive policies and ensuring the establishment of a gender-sensitive budget. That is why we insistently say that the budget table is also a table of the struggle for gender equality.”
Tags: human rights, women, life, lgbti
