Saturday Mothers Commemorate Nurettin Yedigöl on Week 420

It was a sunny Saturday, almost noon time. Istanbul's Istiklal Avenue is having a typical busy day.

A crowd silently formed at Galatasaray Square around a steel monument erected by famous sculptor Sadi Çalık, where three metal bars pointing up to the sky symbolized the "dynamism and enlightenment" of Turkey on its 50th birthday in 1972.

When the clocks struck exactly 12pm local time, Saturday Mothers of Turkey, a group that has been gathering since 1995 to seek information about their sons disappeared under police detention, held their 420th gathering to demand justice from Turkish government.

Some of them in their traditional village costumes and headscarves, others casually dressed, roughly 250 people poised cross-legged on the pavements of Galatasaray Square. A black banner which said "Perpetrators are out there, where are missing people?" in white font letters lied on the street.  

The group members also held photographs of their beloved ones and cloves, a flower that only people bring to funerals in Turkey.

Saturday People launched their peaceful gathering at Galatasaray Square on May 27, 1995. Interrupted due to police violence in 1991, the gatherings were reactivated in 2009.

Each sit-in demonstration is dedicated to one or several people who disappeared under police detention, where demonstrators share tragic stories of the disappeared.

"Nurettin Yedigöl (26) has been detained by the police on 12 April 1981 in Idealtepe, Istanbul. He has been transferred to Gayrettepe Police Headquarters, a main torture center in Turkey's 1980 Military Coup period. A torture group, who called themselves Number 860 Team severely tortured Yedigöl with methods including swiping off his skin, electro-shock through a pin inserted to his skull," Human Rights Association said in a statement.

Ümit Efe, a political activist, confirmed the torture inflicted on Yedigöl, saying that she was also under police detention at the same time.

"Everybody will remember him as the man who was killed with a pin inserted to his skull.   In fact, he was maybe the most naive, good-mannered and

 courageous person in the world," Efe said. "He did everything for the sake of his country and its people. He disobeyed the police torture by keeping silent. This passive act resented his torturers indeed."

Over the course of almost three decades, Nurettin Yedigöl's family filed many official complaints, which yielded no results.

Yedigöl's current lawyer, Eren Keskin, reminded that the parliament ratified a series of judicial reforms on Thursday, including an amendment which removed the statute of limitations in torture cases.

"However," Eren continued, "All the dismissal verdicts due to statute of limitations have proved that officials are a part of evil system. We should put an end to this for the sake of improving democracy in this country."

Zeycan Yedigöl, mother of Nurettin Yedigöl, joined the gathering despite her issues with her legs.

"I brought him up so that he could go to school. In the village, everybody used to ask me why I was working on the farm only by myself. It was all to send my kid to school. How could I know this would happened? Otherwise, I would raise him as shepherd," she said.

Following the 45 minute long gathering, the group transitioned to small talks where they interacted with passers-by. In one of the small circles, a middle-aged man advised a young woman journalist: "This is not like covering campus news. Experiencing this environment is not like reading on the news. Mothers' suffering, though, is beyond words." (BM/NV)