From Collective Action to Collective Resistance: Working with the Saturday Mothers

This chapter focuses on the Saturday Mothers (Cumartesi Anneleri), a group that has gathered in İstanbul for a half-hour sit-in every Saturday since 1995 seeking justice for forced disappearances and political murders in Turkey. The initial protest was composed mainly of mothers of the lost. However, over the past 25 years, other relatives have joined in the protests. In many cases, children grow up going to these protests once a week. This younger generation then grow up participating, take up the mantle, and take the space of the person from the previous generation when they get older. Despite their clear presence in Turkey over the years, very little research has examined their protest. Through this chapter we contextualize the history and origins of the Saturday Mothers and their relationship to the Turkish–Kurdish conflict. We discuss how we became interested in understanding their protest and the way that we went about contacting them and ultimately working together with them to understand the way their protest has passed from one generation to the next.