Saturday Mothers: Perpetual Hope over a Quarter of a Century

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Fol­low­ing the lat­est assem­bly of the Sat­ur­day Moth­ers and for the 790th week of their strug­gle, Kedis­tan has invit­ed Safiye Alağaş, with an arti­cle pub­lished on May 17 2020 in Jin News, and shares it with its read­ers: a trans­la­tion enriched with videos and oth­er information.

Their strug­gle was born from the longest peace­ful protest in Turk­ish his­to­ry. These moth­ers who do not cease ask­ing what was the fate of their chil­dren and dis­ap­peared next of kin, whether they dis­ap­peared under the snow or in full light of day, find tremen­dous sup­port in Turkey but also at the world lev­el. Through­out the years they have crossed with such deter­mi­na­tion, they have been award­ed the Hrant Dink Inter­na­tion­al Prize, in 2013, for instance, but they have also been mis­treat­ed, arrest­ed by the police in dif­fer­ent peri­ods and under var­i­ous regimes.

By Safiye Alağaş. Istanbul, May 17 2020, Jin News
Headline photo: Saturday May 16 2020, Week 790

The fight of the Sat­ur­day Moth­ers search­ing for their chil­dren “who were dis­ap­peared” has been ongo­ing for a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry. For the past 25 years, their strug­gle has per­sist­ed, with­out a respite, with­out their giv­ing up, with­out even once aban­don­ing the hope of “find­ing” their chil­dren again.

On the occa­sion of the “Week of Inter­na­tion­al Strug­gle Against Dis­ap­pear­ances under cus­tody” tak­ing place from May 17 to 31 every year, dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives are orga­nized by human rights activists and close friends of the ones who dis­ap­peared, with the aim of both hon­or­ing the ones who lost their life and of alert­ing pub­lic opin­ion. And the search by the Sat­ur­day Moth­ers hold­ing their breath, which has con­tin­ued for 25 years.

The Sat­ur­day Moth­ers’ com­bat began pre­cise­ly dur­ing a “Week of Inter­na­tion­al Strug­gle Against Dis­ap­pear­ances under Cus­tody” in 1995. As for the pow­ers or their rep­re­sen­ta­tives that have suc­ceed­ed one anoth­er dur­ing all these years, they con­tin­ue to pre­tend not to hear their voic­es. The gath­er­ings of moth­ers who, despite oppres­sions, do not aban­don the squares find great sup­port among the pub­lic and are reg­u­lar­ly an impor­tant source of inspi­ra­tion for poems, songs…

Gath­er­ing on the 500th Week

Disappearances during custody, a State policy

This pol­i­cy has pro­gressed in Turkey, espe­cial­ly after the mil­i­tary coup of Sep­tem­ber 12 1980. Accord­ing to the archives of the Asso­ci­a­tion for Human Rights (İHD), dur­ing the coup in 1980, 15 peo­ple dis­ap­peared while being held in custody.

Imme­di­ate­ly after this coup, on Sep­tem­ber 13, Cemil Kır­bayır was tak­en into cus­tody and dis­ap­peared in Kars. On Sep­tem­ber 18, anoth­er dis­ap­pear­ance occurred in Bingöl and in Novem­ber, Hayret­tin Eren, in Istan­bul, is men­tioned among these 15 disappearances.

How­ev­er, the trans­for­ma­tion of forced dis­ap­pear­ances into a sys­tem­at­ic State pol­i­cy cor­re­sponds to the 90s. Dur­ing those years, this method was used to elim­i­nate oppo­nents and to spread fear in the pop­u­la­tion. Dur­ing this peri­od of the 90s, these prac­tices became so wide­spread that those forced dis­ap­pear­ances did not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between women, chil­dren, the elder­ly. Among them fig­ure per­sons aged from 3 to 90 years.

Discovery of tombs of disappeared ones

In 1992, with the sys­tem­ati­za­tion of dis­ap­pear­ances, the İHD orga­nized an impor­tant cam­paign under the slo­gan “Halt to Forced Dis­ap­pear­ances”. Yet a bit lat­er, in 1995, Hasan Ocak and Rıd­van Karakoç dis­ap­peared in Istan­bul. Fol­low­ing a long strug­gle, their bod­ies were found at the end of 58 days, buried in a com­mon grave. This was the first time that the bod­ies of dis­ap­peared per­sons were discovered.

The İHD repeat­ed its cam­paign for a sec­ond time in 1995, with the Sat­ur­day Moth­ers. And this strug­gle find­ing an echo across the coun­try, became a move­ment. The small group that had gath­ered for the first time on March 27 1995 in front of Istan­bul’s Lycée Galatasaray grew in time, like an avalanche.

The Sat­ur­day Moth­ers – 1998

The United Nations: Protection for all, against forced disappearances

While the Sat­ur­day Moth­ers con­tin­ued their strug­gle it was not before 2007 that the Unit­ed Nations rat­i­fied the “Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion for the pro­tec­tion of all per­sons against forced dis­ap­pear­ances” and 2010 – we may as well say, yes­ter­day – for it to take effect. It is based on a “Dec­la­ra­tion for the Pro­tec­tion of all per­sons against forced dis­ap­pear­ances” adopt­ed by the Unit­ed Nations’ Gen­er­al Assem­bly on Decem­ber 18 1992, which con­sid­ers forced dis­ap­pear­ance to be a “crime against humanity”.

A pause in 1999

In 1999, the Sat­ur­day Moth­ers announced they would mark a pause in their gath­er­ings because of the polit­i­cal ten­sion gen­er­at­ed by the PKK lead­er’s Abdul­lah Öcalan being brought back to Turkey. After a long inter­mis­sion, on Jan­u­ary 30 2009, the moth­ers renewed their search for jus­tice and took their place again at Galatasaray.

In 2018, dur­ing the 700th week of their strug­gle (for which they had called on transna­tion­al sup­port) Sat­ur­day Moth­ers were arrest­ed after a severe police inter­ven­tion dur­ing which some of the moth­ers were molest­ed and placed in cus­tody along with oth­er defendors of rights…

Fol­low­ing this, the square of Galatasaray was put under block­ade because of its asso­ci­a­tion with the moth­ers, and no fur­ther dec­la­ra­tions were autho­rized there. The moth­ers who had not giv­en up on their search for their dis­ap­peared ones and for whom access to the Galatasaray square was for­bid­den by the police, chose to meet in the offices of İHD-Istan­bul in order to con­tin­ue ques­tion­ing from these premis­es on the fate of their dis­ap­peared ones.

With the dec­la­ra­tion of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, they have con­tin­ued their action for the past eight weeks on social media.

You can fol­low them and find ini­tia­tives planned in dif­fer­ent towns: 

Facebook @cumartesianneleri | Twitter @CmrtesiAnneleri

Ahmet Kaya was the voice of the disappeared, Sezen Aksu that of the mothers

The song “Beni Bul Anne” (Find me, moth­er) writ­ten and sung by the Kur­dish musi­cian Ahmet Kaya is now con­sid­ered one of the most pop­u­lar songs in Turkey. A num­ber of musi­cians have giv­en var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions of it.

Thus, with Ahmet Kaya becom­ing the voice of the dis­ap­peared, singer Sezen Aksu has cho­sen to car­ry the cry of the moth­ers. In sup­port for the Sat­ur­day Moth­ers, she has also pre­pared a mini album titled “Cumarte­si Türküsü” (Sat­ur­day Song) con­tain­ing two titles but the album was not put on sale. The album con­ceived for the 5th anniver­sary of the mag­a­zine Aktüel was offered as a sup­ple­ment to an edi­tion which fea­tured Sezen Aksu’s por­trait on the cov­er, under the head­ing “I am also a Sat­ur­day Mother.”

Grup Ban­dista also echoed the moth­ers in 2009 with “Ben­im Annem Cumarte­si” (My moth­er is Saturday)

https://youtu.be/Hk2IGdDa8LI

In this coun­try where any chal­lenge is dif­fi­cult and imme­di­ate­ly repressed, the Moth­ers appear like the rocks beat­en by evil winds but who serve as vig­ils for a num­ber of resis­tances, under var­i­ous guis­es. A hope, there also.

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges – iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com

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