At their 1,092nd vigil in Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square, the Saturday Mothers once again demanded justice for victims of enforced disappearance. The focus of this week’s gathering was the case of Cüneyt Aydınlar, who disappeared 32 years ago after being detained by the Turkish police.
Holding carnations and photographs of their loved ones, participants assembled at the square on the edge of Istiklal Avenue, which has become a symbol of the search for truth over the decades. The statement was read by Zelal Buldan, whose father Savaş Buldan was also abducted, tortured, and killed by Turkish police in 1994.
Arrested at a bus stop
Aydınlar, a student of economics at Istanbul University, was detained on February 20, 1994, at a bus stop in Bakırköy and taken to the political branch of the Istanbul Police Department in Gayrettepe, a station notorious as a center of torture. Although his detention was officially recorded, his subsequent fate remains unknown. According to witness testimonies, he was severely tortured and was physically unable to walk on his own.
Claim of escape instead of clarification
However, the police directorate told the family that Aydınlar had escaped eight days after his detention during a crime scene reconstruction. Fellow detainees contradicted this account. They publicly stated at the time that Cüneyt Aydınlar had remained in custody with them until March 2, 1994, and had been severely tortured. According to their testimony, he was in a physical condition that made escape virtually impossible. They believed that the student had been extrajudicially executed. The Aydınlar family shares this view.
“The judiciary failed to clarify how a handcuffed prisoner, reportedly barely able to walk, could have escaped from dozens of officers,” Buldan said. Instead, she criticized, the unsubstantiated escape claim by the police was made the basis of the investigation. No effective inquiry into the alleged enforced disappearance was conducted. Aydınlar’s body has never been found.
Ongoing human rights violation
“Enforced disappearance as a continuing human rights violation does not expire,” Buldan emphasized. “As long as the fate of the disappeared remains unknown, the legal violation persists. The state is obliged to determine the whereabouts of Cüneyt Aydınlar and to bring those responsible to justice,” she underlined.
At the same time, the Saturday Mothers renewed their demand to lift the restrictions imposed on their vigils at Galatasaray Square. They called for the full implementation of Constitutional Court rulings, which had found a violation of freedom of assembly. The continued restrictions, they said, lack legal basis and aim to suppress the search for truth and justice.
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