Saturday Mothers

In Turkey, there is an event that received the Human Rights Democracy Peace and Solidarity Award by the Social Democracy Foundation in 2013, when a group that has been silently sitting in Galatasaray Square every Saturday since the 1995 Gazi Neighbourhoods events. The name is Saturday mothers. The history of the incident dates back to the events of March 12, 1995 in Gazi Neighbourhoods. It is based on the murder of the taxi driver in the cafe and the fact that many people lost their lives by spreading to many areas of the city and hundreds of people were arrested. As a result of this incident, many of the detainees could not be heard from again. The person named Hasan Ocak was searched for days by his mother and friends, and two months after the incident, Hasan’s lifeless and tortured body was found in a forest area. Thereupon, on behalf of those who were arrested and disappeared at the same time as Hasan, they started a sit-in on Saturdays in Galatasaray Square to raise awareness. At this point, the event had become a search for justice and a struggle for human rights. As a result of these actions since 27 May 1995, although the actions were suspended due to police intervention in 1999, they came together again in 2009 and continued their search for this right. In 2011, with the intervention of the President, the Human Rights Commission of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey started to work on this issue. Then, in 2016, it was requested to find the disappeared from the state archives and to control this crime by preventing it from being time-barred by considering it a crime against humanity. However, when we came to 2020, the file was closed with the decision of the Court of Cassation. As a result of all these events, the subject that Saturday mothers want to mention is that it is a crime against humanity that their acquaintances, who disappeared after being taken to prison and could not be heard from, could have been killed like Hasan Ocak. In this respect, the state is obliged to meet all the vital activities of a prisoner. Therefore, in accordance with democracy and human rights, information should be given to the relatives of the detainees. The fact that they were killed or tortured is a crime against humanity. No one deserves to be tortured after being imprisoned by state intervention for a crime they have committed. The question that the relatives of the disappeared is actually, where did dozens of people disappear? What was done? What happened to the relatives of the disappeared and rights defenders, who have not been able to show this resistance since 2018, wonder to their relatives who are still imprisoned?