Unending oppression, unending resistance
On their 700th week, the police attacked the Saturday Mothers, who sit down in Galatasaray Square every Saturday seeking to learn the fate of their relatives who vanished while in custody. The police, wishing to break up the protest under a last-moment order by Beyoğlu Sub-Provincial Governate, beat up those who had arrived to support the Saturday Mothers and the relatives of the missing and dragged them along the ground. The police waded in against the resisters with plastic bullets and tear gas. Dozens of people, including relatives of the missing Maside Ocak and Besna Tosun and our paper’s anaging Editor Faruk Eren were handcuffed from behind and arrested. The police also sprayed the side roads and arcades off İstiklal Street with tear gas. Some of the arrested were released in the evening. The parliamentarians supporting the Saturday Mothers issued an invitation to the 701st week.
Kayhan Ayhan / Zehra ÖzdilekPhotograph: Hayri Tunç
The police officer arresting Emine Ocak, mother of Hasan Ocak who vanished 23 years ago, released Ocak in response to bystanders’ reactions. Emine Ocak was also arrested in 1997 and Ahmet Şık captured that instant on camera as a journalist.
The 700th action by the Saturday Mothers, who stage a sit-down protest in Galatasaray Square every Saturday to inquire after the fate of relatives who vanished while in custody, was banned with one hour to go until the event. Intervening harshly against those who arrived to support the Saturday Mothers, the police dragged citizens along the ground and beat up parliamentarians. Dozens of citizens were arrested, including our paper’s Managing Editor, Faruk Eren.
The Saturday Mothers assembled yesterday at the Human Rights Association for the sit-down action they stage every week at 12:00 in Galatasaray Square. However, Beyoğlu Sub- Provincial Governate banned the action with one hour to go. At this, twenty busloads of police stormed into the square and prevented the Saturday Mothers from accessing the square. With police reinforcements being called into the square, the Saturday Mothers stated that they would nevertheless sit down in this square as they had done for 699 weeks. Elder sister of Hayrettin Eren, who vanished while in custody, said, “They say we can’t sit down because it’s the 700th week. I will sit down this week and next week. We are not sitting down to suit them.”
Emine mother arrested
Dozens of citizens, including Maside Ocak, Besna Tosun and our paper’s Managing Editor Faruk Eren, were handcuffed from behind and arrested. While being arrested, Faruk Eren, who is seeking his elder brother Hayrettin Eren who vanished at the time of 12 September, said, “I am looking for my elder brother.” The police waded in against those in the square with plastic bullets and tear gas. The police officer arresting Hasan Ocak’s mother Emine Ocak released Ocak following reactions from bystanders and members of parliament. As the time of the action approached, the police intervened against citizens wishing to come to the square. The police hemmed in and fired plastic bullets at citizens who had taken refuge in side roads and arcades off İstiklal Street, the scene of frequent interventions. The police wanted to enter the CHP Beyoğlu Sub-Province Headquarters but MPs prevented this by lowering the shutters.
The police also intervened harshly against the MPs. HDP MPs Garo Paylan, Ahmet Şık, Hüda Kaya, Erkan Baş and Mithat Sancar along with CHP MPs Onursal Adıgüzel, Ali Şeker and Sezgin Tanrıkulu came into frequent confrontation with the police.
With a group including son of murdered journalist Hrant Dink, Arat Dink, and MPs staging a sit-down action, they met with a police onslaught. Arguing with a police officer, Ahmet Şık vented his outrage at the onslaught saying, “Your government and minister are illegal. But, don’t imagine there will be no holding to account for this business. You have committed a crime. You will be held to account, too.”
The parliamentarians, braving the police intervention to sit down in Galatasaray Square and make an announcement, stated that they would be at the side of the Saturday Mothers in the 701st week and issued an invitation to next week’s action. Our paper’s Managing Editor, Faruk Eren, and the arrested citizens were released following health checks and the taking of their statements.
Gas projectile strikes reporter
DHA reporter Deniz Kaya, who was covering the action, was injured by two gas projectiles fired by the police. Condemning the tear gas canister assault, the DHA General Manager issued the statement, “We wonder as to the motivation behind our reporter being targeted and fired at in succession.”
Association for Human Rights and Solidarity for the Oppressed Chair Ahmet Faruk Ünsal commented, “An example is being experienced of their wish to institute the state of emergency using normal laws and enlarge the bans.”
The state of emergency supposedly ended
Members of parliament who had come to Galatasaray Square to support the Saturday Mothers also commented to our paper following the interventions:
HDP Co-Chair Pervin Buldan: A country has been created that fears the silent screaming of mothers. Immorality to this extent cannot be conducted. Today, even if I were on my own, I will sit in that square.
HDP Co-Chair Sezai Temelli: This country’s past injustice is on display here and we are witnessing here the kind of injustices there will be in the future. If we wish to bequeath a just society to future generations, we must first find justice here.
CHP MP Ali Şeker: For 700 weeks and 23 years, mothers have sat in silence and tried to make their cries heard. They did not hear and when they heard they came and instigated fresh arrests. Those who have governed the country for 23 years are partners in this crime of slaughter.
HDP MP Garo Paylan: This unconscionable treatment to mothers who for 699 weeks have been asking in a peaceful manner simply for their children’s bones and for the culprits to be found will go down in history as one of the blackest days in Turkish history.
HDP MP Hüda Kaya: You cannot remain in place. The ruling body is taking the country backwards. Defending rights is worship at its highest. The oppressed who, be who they may, oppose the oppressor and, be who they may, side with the oppressed, are brothers. All the alienated, we are resisting and will resist the oppressors shoulder to shoulder. The attack on the Saturday Mothers is an attack on this people in this country. The ruling body must know its place. The oppressors are united. Whatever their languages, religions and races, the oppressed are also united.
HDP MP Erkan Baş: Today they may perhaps have prevented people from standing shoulder to shoulder using their gas, weapons and arrests, but they cannot prevent our hearts from being side by side. We will combine our hearts and strengths and will for sure win. We will never surrender.
CHP MP Onursal Adıgüzel: Let them lend an ear to the cry for justice and rights in Turkey. They say the state of emergency has ended. I ask from here if the state of emergency has ended or has been given de facto status? The state of emergency is at certain people’s beck and call.
CHP MP Sezgin Tanrıkulu: This square is at the same time a square of conscience, a square of justice. But, today, it witnessed the gravest injustice in its own history and the Saturday Mothers met with truncheons, gas and arrests. We will be here in one week, too.
Photograph: Vedat Arık
HDP MP Ahmet Şık: You will be unable to remain standing In this country, the state has a practice that premises its existence and so-called righteousness on never-ending oppression, torture, coercion and blood for those who stand apart from the ones who obey it and the lawless order it creates. It has an insatiable hunger for killing children, destroying, flogging, injuring and inducing trauma. It thus endeavours to sustain its existence bereft of equality, law, peace and justice.
Mothers in quest of their children’s bones and their experiences sum up what the state is in Turkey. However, the current ruling body, just like its predecessors, is imbued with the foolish notion that it will get the Saturday Mothers to abandon their resolve through oppression and violence.
Those who line up with the Saturday Mothers to combat the coerciveness of this country’s state are the living embodiment of honour. Right is on their side. They are thus stronger than the current ruling body and the fascists whose heirs they are.
We will either be a country that has surrendered to an authoritarianism that defies accountability, to plunder whitewashed with lies and to violence that they have turned into a means for concealing their crimes, or a country that stands up for the law and democracy. If an undeserved life is imposed on us, the option exists of dismissing that life and struggling at the side of the just. It is a human and moral imperative. If not, it should be. An option to be honourable or dishonourable eventually evolves into an option that imposes responsibility at the crux of which is the kind of country our children will live in. This is the summary of what we have experienced from the past until today and what we are struggling for. Let nobody trust their ruling status until such time as lasting peace has been attained and a state has been established that has flourished through universal law and the norms of democracy. Let those who trample on democracy and human rights with the conceit of being in power and in the illusion that they cannot be held accountable know that they will be unable to remain standing in the storm that will subsequently blow.
And let me sum up by recalling Mevlana: “Oh you who from iniquity are digging a well ... You are digging a well for yourself: dig with moderation.”
A final note: It is not hard to find words to say about the character of those who stand up even for the ruling body’s crimes and sins with what they write on social media about people who wish to learn the fate of their children and loved ones and for accountability to be apportioned and the oppression that is brought to bear, but I would be ashamed to utter them. This shame alone suffices for them.
Arat Dink: The ruling body is taking the country backwards Banning the peaceful actions that have lasted 700 weeks of people whose relatives died while in custody, that is at the hands of the state, and arresting them using truncheons, plastic bullets and gas, be they elderly or children...
What happened today will go down in history. There will be attendance again in the 701st week. The Saturday people do not stop at inquiring into the fate of their own missing. In doing so, they have probably prevented hundreds or thousands of people from sharing the same fate with the awareness they have created. With the Saturday people taking this country forward, the ruling body is taking it backwards while leaning on the century-long state tradition. Those claims about closing the brackets come to my mind and they have no other function apart from opening paragraphs further embedded within the paragraph and postponing democracy even further. Never mind the truncheons and gas, while observing police officers who chime in with citizens making the grey wolf gesture and release a torrent of swearing then scream, “Get out of this country,” I found myself wondering if this is really what they want. Could the pious supporters of the ruling body wish to remain alone in this country with the fascists?
DRAGGED ALONG THE GROUND
Gezi hero Aydın Aydoğan was injured in the arm and back in the course of the intervention. Saying he fell to the ground during the onslaught and was injured in the arm from a police officer striking him with a truncheon, Aydoğan said, “On the way there, they also hit me in the back with a plastic bullet. They brought us into this state while we were sitting inside an arcade.”
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