Eight women from the advocacy group Peace Mothers stand accused of financing terrorism over the money they sent to relatives in prison.
The women were arrested from their homes on Thursday in dawn raids, and were released after testifying at the prosecutor’s office, Mezopotamya Agency reported.
One of the women, Hülya Ayık, has been fighting to get her son released from prison on health grounds. Thirty-two-year-old journalist Devrim Ayık was arrested in 2015 while distributing a political magazine, and was released on health grounds in 2018. In 2021, he was arrested again. Ayık has lost sight in one eye completely and has limited vision in the other, and also suffers from Crohn’s disease. His medical reports state he is 76 percent disabled.
Peace Mothers is a civilian initiative founded in 1996 by “women who have been affected by the war” to advocate for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue. Forty members marched from the majority Kurdish Diyarbakır (Amed) province to capital Ankara in 1999, holding roses in their hands and wearing their white hair coverings that later came to symbolise the movement. The group gave presentations on the Kurdish issue at the European Parliament in 2002, and member Müyesser Güneş was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
