Turkey’s Saturday Mothers hold 1000th vigil for the disappeared

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Hundreds gathered in Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square to join the 1000th weekly vigil of the Saturday Mothers, asking for information about their missing loved ones.

The Saturday Mothers are family members of people, mostly human rights activists, journalists and politicians, who disappeared in the 1990s, presumably taken by state agents. They have been holding vigils in Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square every Saturday since May 27, 1995.

Hundreds of people, activists and politicians joined the gathering for the anniversary, including the co-chairs of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party). 

“We attended the 1000th weekly gathering of the Saturday Mothers with our co-chairs, MPs, and leaders. We will continue to ask about the fate of those who disappeared in custody, for justice to be served. Enforced disappearances and unsolved murders are crimes against humanity, and there can be no statute of limitations,” read a statement from DEM Party on X.

Zubeyde and Ishak Tepe, are the parents of journalist Ferhat Tepe who disappeared 31 years ago. They were at Galatasaray Square to ask once more about what happened to their son.

“Our pain is immense. It is clear that when children are lost, the mother bears a great burden. We have been fighting for 30 years. For 30 years we have been searching the graves. We have not found anything,” said Zubeyde Tepe.

“We want the murderers of our children to be found. We say they should come out and face justice,” she added.

The Saturday Mothers’ protest is the longest in Turkey’s history. 

“The Saturday Mothers’ protest is the most legitimate and nonviolent protest in this country. It is a civil protest. There is deep pain at the heart of this protest. People are looking for their children and relatives who have disappeared,” said Eren Keskin, lawyer and human rights activist.

Despite the nonviolent nature of their protest, the Saturday Mothers have been subject to police crackdown and arrests.

In 2011, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his government would look into the disappearances. Turkey's Interior Ministry banned the vigils in August 2018, a few years after the peace process between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) broke down.

A wave of forced disappearances, mainly of left-wing political figures, started after the 1980 coup. The number of disappearances dramatically increased during the early 1990s as the Turkish military responded to a strengthening insurgency by the PKK. A state of emergency giving local authorities extensive powers was declared in much of the country's southeast during this period and was only lifted in 2002. Many Kurdish villages were razed and their inhabitants forcibly removed to other cities. Families say relatives with no links to the PKK were executed by the state, died in custody, or disappeared.

Many have taken their cases to the European Court of Human Rights after being denied justice in Turkey. Despite numerous rulings against it, rights groups say Ankara has done little to put those responsible on trial. They say getting justice for the state-sponsored killings and disappearances should be part of any peace process between Kurdish armed groups and the state.

Rawin Sterk contributed to this report from Istanbul

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