A group of relatives of victims of enforced disappearance in Turkey held a protest today, Saturday, in central Istanbul without police intervention for the first time since 2018. The resumption of the "Saturday Mothers" protest came after Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya stated on Wednesday, in response to questions from opposition lawmakers during a parliamentary session, that the government has "good intentions" and will seek a peaceful resolution to the issue. The group announced on the social media platform (X) that the protest, which involved around 10 people at Galatasaray Square near Taksim in central Istanbul, marked their 972nd protest. They added, "We will not stop searching for all our missing and demanding justice and accountability for the perpetrators."
In 2018, Turkish police informed the Saturday Mothers organization that their protest, which calls for justice for their relatives who were kidnapped or held without record in the 1980s and 1990s, had been banned, and they were dispersed using water cannons and tear gas. In 2021, a group of Saturday Mothers faced legal action for refusing to disperse despite police warnings. Over the past five years, police have dispersed them and detained them every Saturday when they tried to organize their protest. However, the Constitutional Court ruled in February that the rights of some mothers to organize demonstrations had been violated.
