Saturday Mothers' gathering

Photo: Lucas Farioli / Pagina12. Mothers in Galatasaray Square

Lucas Farioli / Istanbul


Many residents of Istanbul have already seen this before. Since 1995 the so-called “Saturday Mothers,” (Cumartesi Anneleri as they are called in Turkey), held protests every Saturday seeking for information about their loved ones, who disappeared in the 1990s.
Those were difficult years for many Kurdish families in Turkey, when hundreds – the exact numebr is still unknown – disappeared at the pick of the conflict between Turkish security forces and armed insurgents of the Kurdish separatist guerrilla, PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).
According to human rights groups, most of the the people who disappeared hailed from the Kurdish-dominated southeastern parts of Turkey. They included PKK members, Kurdish rights sympathizers and ordinary citizens. However some human rights organizations have argued that Turkish security forces also made dissapear other activists that have not been directly related to Kurdish problem.
Four years of Saturday protests on Istiklal Avenue however only yielded police crackdowns and shed little light on a dark chapter in modern Turkish history. Gradually, the “Saturday mothers” demonstrations fizzled out in 1999.
However a series of exceptional developments in the ongoing saga of Turkey’s clash between the secular establishment and the ruling moderate islamist party have reignited long-abandoned quests for justice and human rights along the country.
In recent years, Turks have been gripped by a sensational, high-profile investigation into a shadowy ultranationalist group called Ergenekon that allegedly hatched a plot to overthrow the country’s democratically elected moderate Islamist government. The ruling Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP Justice and Development Party) has been in power since 2002.
The complex Ergenekon case includes allegations that the group had close links to JITEM, Turkey’s infamous military police intelligence wing and an illegal branch of the Turkish Jandarme (Gendarmery). Many experts in Turkish law strongly believe this unit is also responsible for the extrajudicial killings and disappearances during Turkey’s counter-terror operations against the PKK, which began in 1984 and lasted during the whole of the 1990s.
“Ergenekon has seen the opening up of all the old files, and it’s a very healthy (development),” says Hugh Pope of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “The mothers of the missing want answers and they want to encourage the judicial process.”
However the "Saturday Mothers" still keep seeking for answers and even if the government has not officially started the investigation there are signs that indicate that the judiciary has taken some steps in this direcction.