ISTANBUL: A group of Turkish mothers yesterday led their 500th protest since the mid-1990s remembering relatives who disappeared allegedly at the hands of the state during one of modern Turkey’s most turbulent periods.
Around 3,000 people turned out to support the protest, held as always on the bustling Istiklal avenue in central Istanbul. The group, known as the “Saturday Mothers” for the timing of their weekly protest, has been holding the action on Saturday mornings since May 27, 1995.
Seated on the street outside the gates of Galatasaray University, they held placards with the faces of their relatives who disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s and are believed to have died in police and army detention. The disappearances happened at the peak of the rebellion by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) demanding self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
“Bahri Budak, 61 years old, disappeared after being detained in April 1994,” read the words on a picture held by a woman at the protest. The Saturday Mothers group is demanding a full opening of the state archives to uncover what happened to their loved ones, prosecution of the perpetrators and the abolition of the statute of limitations for abuses committed by the security forces.
AFP
