Families demanding the return of their abducted children from the terrorist group PKK on Saturday reiterated commitment to their sit-in protest in front of the PKK-affiliated Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) headquarters in southeastern Diyarbakır province.
The sit-in protest initiated by families holding the HDP responsible for the abduction of their children has, so far, gone on for 1,595 days, or over four years.
"We will not leave this spot until the PKK and HDP return our children to us," said a Necibe Çiftçi, one of the mothers who has been protesting for her son Roşat who was kidnapped when he was 16 from the southastern Hakkari province.
"We don’t ask them for money or anything but our children we carried in our bellies for nine months, that they don’t let our children go to waste," Çiftçi said.
HDP is the now-obsolete title of the Green Left Party (YSP). The party rebranded as YSP after last year’s May elections to skirt a Constitutional Court lawsuit seeking its permanent closure over alleged links to the PKK. It later tried to change its name to Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (Dem Party), but the request was rejected by the courts.
"The PKK killed one of my sons and took the other to the mountains," Çiftçi lamented alongside dozens of other grieving mothers like her holding photographs of their missing children.
She then called out to her son to surrender to Turkish security forces.
Another parent, Yusuf Erdinç who joined the protest from the eastern Van province, recalled his son Mikail was abducted by PKK terrorists while he was still in university in 2015.
"I will continue protesting for my son until the very end," Erdinç stressed. "I have been looking for my son for nine years. The HDP and PKK took my son from me. They broke his pen and handed him a gun instead."
Referring to the nine Turkish soldiers killed by PKK during an operation in northern Iraq on Friday, Erdinç said, "Our soldiers were martyred today. Our hearts are being torn. They’re also my children. I will not give up on this protest until the last drop of my blood."
The protest started when Hacire Akar turned up at the doorstep of the HDP’s Diyarbakır office one night, demanding to be reunited with her son. Akar’s son Mehmet returned home on Aug. 24, 2019, giving hope to other families. A week later, on Sept. 3, 2019, families inspired by Akar staged a collective sit-in protest.
Demonstrations have since spread to other provinces, including Van, Muş, Şırnak and Hakkari.
Families have not given up their posts despite difficult conditions, at times being threatened or ridiculed by the HDP officials and those with links to the PKK terrorist organization. The protests continued despite the coronavirus pandemic, with the families taking the necessary precautions.
A significant number of suspected terrorists have begun to flee the PKK and surrender, but many terrorists lack the courage to leave the group out of fear of severe punishment if caught.
Since the PKK terrorist attacks on Friday, which killed nine soldiers and injured four others, Turkish airstrikes have destroyed dozens of terror targets in northern Iraq where PKK has hideouts, as well as its headquarters in the Qandil Mountains.
Türkiye launched Operation Claw-Lock in April 2022 to target the PKK terror group's hideouts in the Metina, Zap and Avasin-Basyan regions of northern Iraq, located near the Turkish border.