Turkey’s Saturday Mothers hold vigil after five-year ban

ISTANBUL: Turkish women remembering the disappearance of relatives in the 1980s and 1990s held a vigil in Istanbul on Saturday without police interference for the first time in five years.

Known as the “Saturday Mothers” (“Cumartesi Anneleri” in Turkish), they have met on Saturdays since May 27, 1995 in the heart of Istanbul, remembering relatives who went missing allegedly at the hands of the state in one of modern Turkey’s most turbulent periods.

In 2018, police violently cracked down on their demo following an announcement by local authorities that it would be banned because calls for the rally had been made on social media accounts linked to outlawed Kurdish militants listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.

10 protesters held their vigil on Saturday without any police interference.

It comes after Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a parliamentary committee this week that a solution would be found as soon as possible.

The disappearances happened at the peak of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency demanding self-rule in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.

The country was also wracked by political instability and violence following the 1980 military coup, with many detained for political activism.

Activists say the state has never properly investigated the fate of those who disappeared after being detained by the authorities.

The Saturday Mothers group was unable to hold its protests for a decade from 1999 to 2009 due to repeated police interventions, but they then resumed them even though police maintained a watchful presence at the protests.