The same stage is set up every year.
Soft piano music on television screens...
Jewelry store advertisements
“Mother's right is unpaid” slogans...
Social media posts...
Protocol messages
Then for one day motherhood is blessed.
But there are such mothers in the memory of this country;
what happened to their children is still unexplained.
This is where Turkey's biggest moral breakdown begins.
Because motherhood is not loved in this country; the idea of motherhood is romanticized.
The mother is glorified as long as she is a symbol of sacrifice, silence and endurance.
But things change when a mother comes out and starts holding the state to account.
“The moment he says, ”Where is my child?"
That mother is no longer the “holy mother” applauded on the screens.
Suddenly it becomes “disturbing”.
Suddenly it's “political”.
Suddenly it becomes a memory that needs to be silenced.
This is precisely why the Saturday Mothers are the biggest mirror of conscience in this country.
Because they are not just relatives of the disappeared.
They are living witnesses to the dark pages that the state wants to make us forget.
Since 1995...
They have been sitting in the same square for over thirty years.
Imagine a country:
Governments change.
Parties are changing.
Politicians are changing.
The headlines are changing.
But the mothers' question remains the same:
“Where is my child?”
And what's scarier is this:
This country has not been able to give a convincing answer to this question for thirty years.
Mother Berfo was one of the heaviest symbols of this great silence.
He died at 105.
He spent the last years of a century of life searching for his son's bones.
Cemil Kırbayır was disappeared in custody during the 1980 coup d'état.
Mother Berfo said the same sentence for years:
“Find my son's bones before I die.”
This sentence is actually a regime analysis on its own.
Because imagine a state;
a mother doesn't even get a grave.
Mother Berfo asked for a post,
what a fortune,
what a privilege
He only asked for the right to mourn.
But in Turkey, even mourning is not fully recognized for some mothers.
That is why Mother's Day is not just an emotional day here.
It is a political litmus paper.
The true character of a society;
not how many poems he wrote to their mother,
how he treats suffering mothers.
And Turkey has failed this test for years.
Mothers Reminded What the State Wanted to Forget
Memory has never been an innocent issue in Turkey.
In this country, forgetting is often a state policy.
Remembering is often a form of resistance.
This is precisely why the struggle of the Saturday Mothers for more than thirty years is not only an “action of the relatives of the disappeared”.
This struggle is a moral war of memory against state-organized forgetting.
Because it was not just about the missing people.
Issue;
was the normalization of a system in which people could disappear.
Throughout the 90s, this country lived with unsolved murders, disappearances in custody and shadowy relations.
The newspapers wrote about it for a few days.
Politicians made several statements.
Then life went on.
But the mothers' lives did not continue.
For a mother, time stops where her child disappears.
This is why the Saturday Mothers have been sitting with the same photographs for years.
For them the calendar has not moved forward.
Turkey thought it was moving forward.
He built shopping malls.
He erected residences.
He talked about mega projects.
“They chanted ”New Turkey" slogans.
But an old pain still lingered in Galatasaray Square.
And this was the thing that spoiled the modernization fairy tale of this country the most.
Because no “great state” narrative,
is no more powerful than a mother's question, “Where is my child?”.
The rulers were disturbed by this.
Because even the silence of the Saturday Mothers was incriminating.
They were not shouting a slogan.
They were not making propaganda for an organization.
They were not holding guns, but photos of their children.
And yet they were batoned for years.
In which normal country in the world are 70-80 year old mothers greeted with a police barrier?
Which state perceives a threat from women who demand a grave?
This is exactly where the issue starts.
Because the state mind in Turkey has often been afraid of the truth.
The most naked version of the truth was on the faces of mothers.
On Mother Berfo's face...
In Emine Ocak's hands
In the silence of the women who sat in that square for years...
They reminded this country:
A state is measured not only by its borders but also by its conscience.
And if you can't answer a mother's request for a grave;
Talk about big projects all you want,
You can make all the hamas you want,
There is a serious moral collapse there.
Today, on Mother's Day, the screens will once again be filled with emotional commercials.
Maybe politicians will share photos with mothers.
Maybe there will be long speeches about “motherhood is sacred”.
But first this country has to answer this question:
If motherhood was so sacred,
Why were the Saturday Mothers dragged on the ground for years?
Why is their suffering always treated as a security issue?
Why did this country choose to silence crying mothers instead of listening to them?
Because the problem in Turkey is not only the darkness of the past;
the courage to face those darknesses is still lacking.
And societies that cannot confront cannot progress morally.
That is why the Saturday Mothers are not only looking for the missing.
They are actually looking for the conscience that this country has lost.
A Country in Debt to Mother Berfo This country spent another Mother's Day in debt to Mother Berfo. Because the issue is not only about the pain of the past;
is the great silence that has been established until today in the face of those sufferings. In Turkey, the state has often sought its greatness in its toughness.
But true state seriousness is revealed in moral courage in the face of suffering.
To be able to tell a mother the truth...
To be able to point to a grave...
You go in front of a community:
“To be able to say, ”Yes, big mistakes have been made here"...
But Turkey could not do this.
Because in this country, denial has often been preferred over confrontation.
Hamas instead of truth...
The language of security instead of justice...
State reflex instead of conscience...
And mothers paid the highest price for this.
The story of the Saturday Mothers is actually the story of democracy in Turkey.
A story of incomplete, fragile and constantly repressed democracy...
Because a democratic state is a state that can explain the disappearance of its citizens.
More importantly, it is the state that can hold it to account.
For years, Turkey did the opposite.
He silenced those who spoke about the disappeared.
It made the pain invisible.
He closed the squares.
He tried to disperse the memory.
But they failed to calculate one thing:
Some pains grow the more they are repressed.
This is why Mother Berfo's sentence still echoes in the conscience of this country:
“Find my son's bones before I die.”
Caution.
There is no anger in this sentence.
No revenge.
No threats.
There is only the effort to remain human.
And therein lies perhaps Turkey's greatest tragedy:
The fact that even such a humanitarian request has gone unanswered for years...
Today, when we look back, we see this very clearly:
The Saturday Mothers were actually the moral anchor of this country.
Politics has drifted.
Journalism has been blown away.
Institutions were scattered.
Principles were thrown to the winds.
But those mothers stayed in the same place.
In the same square
With the same photos
With the same question
That is why their silence was more meaningful than the loud speeches of many politicians.
Because sometimes the truth does not shout.
He just sits and waits.
Galatasaray Square has done exactly that for years.
He kept the memory on hold against this country's desire to forget.
And this was perhaps Turkey's biggest fear:
People who do not forget
Because if it is forgotten, the order will continue.
But if it is remembered, it will be held to account.
Today, on Mother's Day, everyone will say beautiful sentences about motherhood.
But this country first has to answer this: Why did a mother have to search for her child's grave for thirty years? Why has even the most basic right of a mother become a political crisis? Why has even the tears of mothers in this country been filtered through an ideological filter?
This is the real Mother's Day issue in Turkey.
Not flowers
It is not an advertisement
It is not a slogan... It is a matter of truth...
And because this country still cannot tell Mother Berfo the truth;
every Mother's Day is a little incomplete,
a little embarrassed,
he's gonna owe some money.