Mothers who lost children in Turkey’s long-standing Kurdish conflict came together in Diyarbakır (Amed) on Saturday, calling for peace, remembrance and justice during a civil society gathering that underscored a rare moment of unity across political and ethnic lines.
Held under the banner “The Road to Peace: Memory and Justice,” the event was organised by the Human Rights Association (İHD), bringing together families of those killed in clashes, disappearances, and military operations across the last four decades. The testimonies of two mothers—Makbule Kaymaz and Ayşe Bülbül—stood out, as each addressed the gathering through written messages due to health-related absences.
“I am a Kurdish mother. I lost my 12-year-old son and his father to 13 bullets. I have carried that grief for years,” wrote Makbule Kaymaz, whose son Uğur Kaymaz was killed alongside his father by state security forces in 2004 in Kızıltepe (Qoser), a predominantly Kurdish district in Mardin (Mêrdîn). “But I am here because I do not want other mothers to suffer the same. We want justice, equality and peace—because peace will do us all good.”
The gathering comes at a time when calls for renewed dialogue between the Turkish state and Kurdish political actors are growing. The conflict, which has claimed over 40,000 lives since the 1980s—many of them Kurdish civilians—saw its most promising peace process collapse in 2015, followed by intensified violence and mass arrests of pro-Kurdish politicians.
In a message that surprised many, Ayşe Bülbül, mother of Eren Bülbül, a 15-year-old killed in 2017 during a clash between Turkish security forces and members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), expressed cautious support for peace. “My son became a martyr. But I cannot accept the loss of more children,” she said. “What else can I support but peace?”
Ayşe Bülbül’s message follows a symbolic phone call earlier this month from Tuncer Bakırhan, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party. Bakırhan phoned Bülbül during the Eid holiday to thank her for her remarks supporting dialogue. The gesture was widely viewed as a hopeful step towards reconciliation, especially given Bülbül’s background and previous statements aligned with state narratives.
Speaking at the event, İHD Co-Chair Eren Keskin emphasised the importance of shared grief as a foundation for future peace. “For the first time, we are witnessing each other’s pain,” she said. “We must move towards a society where no one else loses their child to conflict.”
The event also included presentations on the scale of the violence. According to İHD figures, between 1991 and 2024, over 36,000 people were killed in the conflict, including more than 9,000 civilians. The rights group documented thousands of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and forced village evacuations, particularly in the Kurdish-majority southeast.
Civil society speakers urged for collective mourning, dialogue across political lines, and long-term mechanisms of justice and truth-telling. Vivet Alevi, a non-violent communication trainer, highlighted the cost of societal polarisation. “We speak of ‘our’ neighbourhoods and ‘theirs’, but in doing so, we lose our common humanity,” she said. “We need spaces to mourn, to listen, and to meet again.”
The meeting, held behind closed doors after the public statements, was seen by participants as both a symbolic reckoning and a tentative step forward. As one speaker noted, gestures of empathy between those once divided by violence may now offer a fragile but vital foundation for peace.
