In Istanbul, due to the March 8 International Women's Day demonstrations, several roads were closed to traffic today, as has been the case in recent years. However, as they do every year, women gathered in Sıraselviler—used as an alternative route—to hold their march, voice their demands, and make themselves heard. Women began arriving hours before the 19:30 gathering time. Many women took their places in the area with flags and banners, chanting slogans such as "Woman, life, freedom," "Jin, jiyan, azadi," "Where are the police while women are dying?", "Femicides are political," and "Rights, law, justice."
At the end of the Feminist Night March, as the crowd dispersed, the police detained six people. Despite all the objections from the women, those detained were taken to the police station. Feminist lawyers went to the station to monitor the proceedings. Late at night, a post on the digital media account of the March 8 Feminist Night March announced that the six detained individuals had been released.
Barricades in Taksim
According to a statement made by the Istanbul Police Department early today, the roads to be closed to traffic within the scope of the demonstrations in Kadıköy were determined as of 11:00.
According to reports from Anadolu Agency, in this context, the Söğütlüçeşme Street Tram Road, Bahariye Street Tram Road, and Albay Faik Sözdener Street Tram Road were closed to traffic. Additionally, in a statement made on the social media account of Metro Istanbul, it was announced that in line with the decision taken by the Istanbul Governor's Office, as of 15:00 and until further notice, the Taksim and Şişhane stations of the M2 Yenikapı-Hacıosman Metro Line and the F1 Taksim-Kabataş Funicular Line would be closed.
However, despite all road and transportation closures, women moved toward Taksim. Although they could not enter Taksim Square, which was surrounded by barricades, the women who gathered in Cihangir and Sıraselviler managed to break the blockade this year as well with slogans, banners, and anthems.
The "March 8 Women's March," which started at 19:30, ended around 21:00 with dances and the reading of the press statement in Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic.
Palestinian, Druze, and Alevi Women
The press statement of the 24th Feminist Night March in 2026 is as follows:
"Today, we are here together for the 24th Feminist Night March. As every year, we raise our voices with our enthusiasm, our rebellion, and our solidarity. We came to this area today by overcoming police barricades and walking long distances. Why? Because we all know that our liberation lies in feminism, and that feminism is our only option to exist in this world.
Yesterday, today, and probably tomorrow. Every day, we wake up to wars and destruction caused by men. While US and Israeli missiles fall on Iran right next to us, Turkey becomes an accomplice to this crime by opening NATO bases for use. Palestinian women are being tortured in the prisons of Israel, which tries to justify this war in the name of 'liberating women.' HTS, which is in power in Syria with US support, is killing Alevi, Kurdish, Arab, and Druze women. Trump, who does everything he can to cover up the Epstein files and his own complicity, only remembers women's freedom when it serves to bomb his enemy. We know this lie from Iraq and Afghanistan!
We watch those who plunder the world, how they steal from us and grow rich. All while they test us with hunger and eye the few cents in our pockets, the two bites in our mouths. We see those who increase their power while turning us into enemies of one another. How they leave all of us breathless. In these days when the world we know is being turned upside down, we remind each other not to get caught in this darkness, not to get used to hopelessness, and not to settle for this order created by men. That is exactly why we join the voices of women who, while resisting Islamist dictatorial regimes on one hand, say 'our freedom will not come from your hands' against US and Israeli aggression on the other.
For centuries, men have been living off the backs of us women; they lead a life of comfort thanks to the unpaid labor of women. They show up in public life, work comfortably in paid jobs, and gain status thanks to the life that women reproduce within the home. They control women's sexuality and, calling it love, they usurp women's rights to make decisions over their own lives. With an unshakable belief that women are subordinate to them, they see it as their right to commit violence against women and to kill them—sometimes taking the strength of a religious sect behind them, sometimes a gang, and sometimes the power of being a state prosecutor. Men feed on the failure to implement preventive and protective policies, on impunity, and on the fact that women's most basic rights—the civil code, divorce, alimony, and abortion—are constantly made a matter of debate and are under attack.
Calling it the 'Year of the Family'
By calling it the 'Year of the Family,' by saying they will de-gender us, they are trying to prevent trans people's access to hormones and their right to life by taking things as far as controlling gender and creating fabricated categories like 'behaviors not suitable for one's gender,' fundamentally trying to protect the dominance of men over women. Because they know this dominance is in danger; because they are aware of the danger created by the transformative power of feminism. Because this order will change—thanks to every woman who is here or cannot be here today and who struggles against patriarchy in her own life.
Just as we have exposed the crimes committed by men against women by making real a struggle that a woman walking on this street a hundred years ago could perhaps only imagine, we will build a new world in the same way. Thanks to our feminist solidarity. To direct our own lives, to be free, to claim our bodies, our labor, our sexuality, and our identities. To claim our future.
We say our liberation lies in feminism. Liberation is possible together, with feminist solidarity. We will transform the world with what we have learned from our own lives and from all the women who came before us. Because we learned from feminism that it is possible to live by building a peaceful, equal, and just life without being enemies.
Therefore, we repeat: Long live our feminist struggle!"
