Saturday Mothers at Galatasaray Square again in the 1000th week
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For 29 years, the Saturday Mothers, who have been meeting in Galatasaray Square every Saturday to question the fate of their relatives who disappeared under custody, will come together today for the 1000th week of their struggle. The longest-running civil disobedience action in Turkey is based on the campaign launched by the family of Hasan Ocak, who was detained on 21 March 1995 during the events in the Gazi neighborhood and was never heard from again.
Hasan Ocak, 30 years old, was not found despite all interrogations of his family and 58 days after he was taken into custody, it was learnt that he was in the cemetery of orphans. The struggle for his rights spread all over the country and Galatasaray Square became a centre of struggle for those questioning the fate of their disappeared relatives.
We talked to Maside Ocak, Hasan Ocak’s sister, about the Saturday Mothers’ struggle for justice and what this act of civil disobedience has changed in the country.
Saturday Mothers have been continuing their vigil for justice for 1000 weeks. This is the longest-running demonstration in Turkey so far. But even today, the policy of impunity has not ended and human rights are still being violated. What happened in this 1000th week of struggle and what impact did it have on our social memory?
The reason why the Saturday Mothers came together was the denial of the existence of their relatives who had disappeared in custody and the fact that all legal channels and all means of seeking their rights were closed to them.
We went to Galatasaray for the first time on 27 May 1995, and today we have a ten-year break and we are entering the 1000th week. We don’t want our 1000th week to be understood only as a number, because until we reached this 1000th week, there were times of great pain, great pressure, and at the same time, there were times when our human traumas increased. But this 1000th week, at the same time, in an environment where hope was exhausted and no solution could be found and doors were closed in our faces, the relatives of the disappeared in Galatasaray created hope for each other and themselves.
They created hope with their struggle against the disappeared, they created hope by relying on each other, leaning on each other, and they actually wrote a history of struggle. This is the second longest-running struggle in the world, after the Mothers of Plaza De Mayo.
But it is also necessary to say here that our main demands are to uncover the truth about our disappeared and to bring those responsible to justice. Until these demands are fulfilled, the mourning of each of the relatives of the disappeared will not be complete.
‘We struggle for justice and the return of our missing persons’
As we come to the 1000th week, I would like to ask as a reminder for the younger generations. How did the Saturday Mothers come into being?
On 21 March 1995, my brother Hasan Ocak was disappeared and we started a very large campaign about him. After a period of the campaign, we started to come together with other relatives of the disappeared and we said, “You took all our disappeared alive, we want them alive”, not just Hasan. In fact, our search for Hasan was in a sense a period when the Saturday Mothers, or more precisely the relatives of the disappeared, started to come together.
After 58 days of intensive search, we were able to find my brother’s lifeless body in the cemetery of orphans. Immediately afterwards, we decided to sit silently in Galatasaray Square, side by side with relatives of the disappeared and human rights defenders, taking the struggle of the Plaza De Mayo mothers as an example. When we first went out, there were five relatives of the disappeared and about thirty people, but while we were sitting in Galatasaray Square, the disappearances continued.
While the disappearances continued, on the other hand, the families of people who had been disappeared in detention before we started to sit, that is, people who had been disappeared in the 1980s, 1936, etc., also met at Galatasaray Square. Even though we actually called ourselves Saturday People, the public opinion has more appropriated the name Saturday Mothers.
It has been 29 years since the day we started, and the families of people whose fathers, brothers or relatives were disappeared, who were children at that time, who were just born at that time, are now continuing this struggle as part of this struggle. Imagine that they have become our lawyers, they have become the second and third generation of our struggle, and they continue the struggle. As I have just said, all of this is for the truth to be uncovered, for our missing persons to be returned to us and for justice.
‘Galatasaray Square has turned into a space that protects people’s right to life’
Saturday Mothers came together for the first time on 27 May 1995 to search for the disappeared. What has changed in the intervening 29 years?
Actually, both things have changed and things have not changed. What led us to Galatasaray was the silence of the state and society about the disappearances in custody. We went to Galatasaray Square to break that silence with our silence. On the other hand, while the state’s silence about the fate of the disappeared continued, and the judicial authorities’ silence about the prosecution of those responsible continued, our voice was raised.
I should also say this in particular: In 1994, the number of applications to the Human Rights Association for disappearances in detention exceeded 500, but this number started to decrease gradually after our appearance in Galatasaray. When we had to take a break in 1999, the number of people disappeared in detention in that year was around 10. And this struggle, that is to say, the Saturday People, the Saturday Mothers’ appearance at Galatasaray, has actually created a barrier against the disappearances in detention, which are being carried out as a state policy in this country, and has become a space that protects people’s right to life.
That is why, when the Saturday Mothers/People consider Galatasaray Square as a place of memory, it has become a space for the protection of people’s right to life. But most importantly, every relative of the disappeared was in Galatasaray Square for the loved ones they could not find, whose graves they could not reach. For this reason, Galatasaray Square became both a place to meet our disappeared, our home, and the burial place of our disappeared whose graves were not known.
This process has changed everyone from the beginning to the end, how has this activism, which has reached its 1000th week, changed women?
Actually, first of all, let me say that although the name “mother” is mentioned, there are also brothers, fathers and sons who continue this struggle.
Therefore, if I want to say something general about how it has changed a women’s movement or women, I can only say this: Most of the relatives of the disappeared had never left their homes, some of them were illiterate women who did not speak Turkish, and they learnt to read, write and speak Turkish after they started coming to Galatasaray.
Or women whose only worries were what to cook for their children at home in the evening became the search for the truth and the demand for justice. And the relatives of the disappeared in Galatasaray went even further and became human rights defenders.
‘The ban lifted in the 1000th week is the result of a legal struggle’
Galatasaray Square has been closed to mothers since the 700th week. Serious pressures and bans were applied. The Governorate announced that the ban was lifted for the 1000th week. What was the reason for the pressure for about 300 weeks, how do you evaluate the lifting of the ban?
There is a process for lifting this ban. After Galatasaray Square was closed to Saturday Mothers, Saturday People and all Istanbulites, we made legal attempts. Following these legal initiatives, the Constitutional Court made two decisions: The Constitutional Court analysed the application made by me and the application made by Gülseren Yoleri, the Chairperson of the Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association, and found the closure of Galatasaray Square and our prevention as a violation of rights.
In addition, the Constitutional Court stated that in democratic societies, people like the Saturday Mothers who come together to form public opinion should be respected. It also stated that it sent a copy of the judgement to the Beyoğlu District Governorate and the Istanbul Governorate to prevent new violations. Therefore, we wanted to go to Galatasaray Square again after these decisions, but we were prevented for 29 weeks. For 20 weeks, we were detained and subjected to violence every time we went to İstiklâl.
During these 29 weeks, 29 investigations were opened against us. In 28 of these 29 investigations, it was stated that “no criminal offence was found”. In other words, the prosecutors of this country did not see our search for our disappeared as a criminal offence.
Therefore, at the point we have reached, we made our press statement in Galatasaray under the 29-week-long ban, limited to 10 people, and we were allowed to carry the photographs of our missing persons, again limited to 10 people. But we have more than 150 relatives of the disappeared living in Istanbul alone. This means the following: “Only 10 people should search for their missing persons and other people should not ask about their missing persons.” Our initiatives on this continued, then it was announced that we would be allowed in our 1000th week, but we were not allowed in the 1001st week, nor in the 699th week. In the 699th week as well as in the 1001st week. We want to sit in our old order as we did in our 699th week and before. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)