Hacire Akar from southeastern Turkey's Diyarbakır was reunited yesterday with her 21-year-old son, who was kidnapped by the terrorist PKK.
Akar launched a sit-in protest last week in front of the pro-PKK Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) provincial office in Diyarbakır. She demanded her son back and spent a whole night outside. She said she would continue her protests despite obvious fatigue. Akar said her son was forcibly taken to the mountains. "My son entered the HDP provincial building and did not come out," she claimed. The HDP is known for its support and close links to the PKK terrorist organization.
Following her sit-in and with the help of security forces in Diyarbakır, Akar was finally reunited with her son yesterday. B.K., a member of the HDP's youth branch and R.K., a counselor of the Diyarbakır Municipality, have been detained in connection with the incident. After being reunited with her son, Akar received a call from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan yesterday.
"You have resisted and rescued your son from the hands of these traitors. Because of this, I congratulate you on behalf of myself and the people. We need these kinds of mothers," Erdoğan said to Akar. Earlier Thursday, Akar went to the police station and filed a missing person's report and a criminal complaint against the HDP. She then headed to the party building. In a state of grief and anger, she smashed one of the building's windows and started a sit-in protest, stating that she would not leave until her son is found.
It was later revealed that her other son, Fırat Akar, was also abducted by PKK terrorists in 1994 and found dead in the mountains in 2017.
"I was not even able to see the body of my son," she said. "Once one enters this building, no one can escape. The HDP is taking our children to the mountains with the help of drugs, pills and medication. It is a place of carnage, for savages and oppressors," she said while complaining of a lack of support from rights activists.
In 2011, families whose children were kidnapped by the PKK terrorist organization once again gathered for a sit-in protest in Diyarbakır to show their discontent toward HDP officials. Nongovernmental organization (NGO) representatives were also present at the protest and pointed out that abducting a child for war and conflict falls in the U.N.'s category of crimes against humanity. Blaming the HDP for being indifferent to the fact that children are being handed with guns and trained for war, the protesters voiced their anger and asked for the government's help.
In July, the PKK and their Syrian affiliate, the People's Protection Units (YPG), admitted recruiting children between the ages of 11 and 16 for terrorist activities in a meeting with a U.N. representative.
Virginia Gamba, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative on children in armed conflicts, met with a YPG terrorist in Geneva and signed a deal to end the recruitment of child soldiers. However, the practice of abduction to recruit terrorists still continues.
