From Relatives of the Disappeared to Erdoğan: We Don’t Live in Bright Picture You Draw

* Photographs: Evrim Kepenek / bianet

Click to read the article in Turkish

Prevented from holding their weekly sit-in protests at Galatasaray Square since their 700th gathering, Saturday Mothers/People came together in front of Human Rights Association's (İHD) İstanbul Branch Office in Beyoğlu in the 740th week of their protests on June 1 and asked the fate of Kurdish businesspeople Savaş Buldan, Adnan Yıldırım and Hacı Kabay in the 25th year of their disappearance in police custody.

While the relatives of the disappeared carried carnations and pictures of their losses in their hands, this week's gathering was also attended by Republican People's Party (CHP) MP Sezgin Tanrıkulu and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chairs Sezai Temelli and Pervin Buldan, who is also the wife of Savaş Buldan, who was commemorated in this gathering.

Reading out this week's statement for the press on behalf of Saturday Mothers/People, Besna Tosun addressed the Judicial Reform Strategy document introduced by President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week:

CLICK - President Erdoğan Announces Judicial Reform Strategy

'We are made to live in unlawfulness'

"We don't live in the 'Bright Picture of Turkey' that the President has drawn. We live in a limbo where we cannot learn the fate of our loved ones who were disappeared. We are made to live in a state of unlawfulness where we cannot reach the truth and justice and cannot communicate our demands to the public. We are making a call to the President:

"What we need as a society is not the judicial packages that are the repetition of each other and remain unfulfilled, but the practices that will ensure real justice, democracy and human rights.

"We are calling onyou to immediately initiate the practices based on our Constitutional demands and democratic requests of society in the name of truth, justice and conscience.

'We know the perpetrators very well'

Taking the floor after Besna Tosun, HDP Co-Chair Pervin Buldan, who is also the wife of Savaş Buldan disappeared in custody 25 years ago today, also made the following remarks:

"In this 25-year period, we appealed to everyone, we knocked on every door. But, we were faced with thick walls and a silent, deaf and mute system that doesn't see the incident and doesn't want it to be investigated. For 25 years, we have done our best to ensure that murderers will be brought to justice.

"The policy of systematic disappearance and massacre has been continuing up until today. In fact, we know very well who the perpetrators are. We know that these murders were committed by the hand of the state. Because the ones who committed these murders have never hidden themselves, they told about the murders in some commissions. However, the state and government didn't do anything to change it.

"If the ones killed in unidentified murders are not a part of this judicial reform, if there is nothing about the trial of the responsible parties in it, then we don't expect anything from this judicial reform. These issues should definitely be included in the reform, the society must be relieved." (EMK/AÖ/SD)