Politics in Turkey is often talked about in terms of big projects, electoral calculations and the balance of power. However, the most naked form of politics is hidden in a mother's insistence on asking for her missing child. This is precisely why the Saturday Mothers are not just a human rights movement; they are one of the clearest mirrors of the tension between the state and society.
The demand of the Saturday Mothers is simple but politically shocking: “Let the state face its own past.” This demand transforms the issue from an individual story of mourning into a discussion directly related to the character of the regime. Because enforced disappearances are not isolated incidents; they are the product of the security policies of a certain period. Without acknowledging this reality, no discourse of “normalization” can be sincere.
The fact that these actions are still prevented or limited today is not a political choice of the past but of the present. The state wants to control memory, because anything that is remembered can turn into accountability. The Saturday Mothers do the opposite: They refuse to forget. Therefore, their existence is a challenge not only to the dark pages of the past, but also to today's understanding of power.
The real issue here is not security, but dominance over narrative. The conflict between official history and social memory is one of the deepest fault lines in Turkish politics. The Saturday Mothers have become a political subject standing on this fault line and saying “there is another truth”. Unless their demands are met, the “strong” appearance of the state actually betrays a vulnerability: The fear of not being able to confront the past.
Moreover, the criminalization of this movement narrows the democratic space not only for one group, but for the whole society. Because if today the voices of mothers searching for their disappeared are suppressed, tomorrow another demand for rights may be silenced by the same methods. This is why the issue of the Saturday Mothers is not a matter of solidarity, but directly a matter of democracy.
Politics is not only the art of winning power; it is also the courage to accept the truth. The question that the Saturday Mothers have been asking for years is still there and the longer it remains unanswered, the more politicized it becomes: Doesn't a state have to explain what it is doing to its own citizens?
If this question cannot be answered openly and honestly, the problem is no longer in the past, but in the political system of today. And maybe that is exactly why the Saturday Mothers are still there: Because as long as some questions continue to be asked in Turkey, politics will really begin.