AP: Turkey's Moms Seek Lost Children

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From: DHKC Informationbureau Amsterdam <dhkc at dds.nl>
Subject: AP: Turkey's Moms Seek Lost Children 

Turkey's Moms Seek Lost Children 

By YALMAN ONARAN 
Associated Press Writer 
Saturday, February 8, 1997 12:43 pm EST 

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- Ismail Sahin left for his job as a garbage
collector on Jan. 18, 1996, and never returned. Witnesses say a group of
men hustled him away during a shift change. 

On Saturday, his mother, wife and two small children took their place with
hundreds of others at a rally in downtown Istanbul, as they have every
week since his disappearance. 

``If we could find his body, we'd be relieved -- at least we'd know he's
dead,'' said Hatice Sahin, Ismail's mother. 

Saturday mothers, as they are known, have become an institution over
the past two years. They gather Saturdays on Istanbul's Istiklal Street
and hold pictures of their lost loved ones, whom they say were taken into
custody by police. 

Sitting in the freezing rain or sweltering sun, they demand that the
government find their sons and daughters -- or account for their deaths. 

Their plight is played out on television screens and newspaper pages
every week. 

A U.S. State Department report on human rights, made public last month,
said the Turkish police violate regulations requiring the immediate
registration of detainees and the notification of their families. 

Turkey's Human Rights Association counts more than 800 disappeared
people -- and suspects that they disappeared after security forces
detained them. 

Most of the cases cited by the association occurred in southeastern
Turkey, where a 12-year-old war between Kurdish rebels and the
Turkish army has claimed more than 21,000 lives. 

The war is ruthless, and democratic rules allegedly are swept aside under
the claim of ``fighting terrorism.'' The security forces are accused of
hundreds of summary executions and torture. 

But even in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city with 10 million people, people
can disappear. 

Sahin, then 31, was last seen as he got off his garbage truck on a busy
street. The family believes he was taken by plainclothes police. They say
he had leftist leanings, but don't believe he was connected to any
particular group. 

``I come here every week with the hope that someone sees his pictures
and calls us with some tip,'' Mrs. Sahin said. 

Authorities deny they are holding any of the missing people. 

Alaaddin Yuksel, Turkey's police chief, told reporters 10 days ago that
most of the people on the missing list were in the mountains of the
southeast, among the Kurdish guerrillas. 

Others were in prison, Yuksel said. ``We'll illuminate the Saturday mothers
this weekend.'' 

Two Saturdays have passed since that statement, with no further
explanation from police. 

One mother, whose son's corpse was found three months after he
disappeared in 1995, still comes to the Saturday rally. 

``My son is dead, but I shout every week so young people like you don't
disappear any more,'' Emine Ocak told a reporter, her eyes filling with
tears. 

           © Copyright 1997 The Associated Press

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