Reports are only just emerging that Celil Begdaş, active for four years with a pro-government group calling themselves the Diyarbakır Mothers, and also known for his close relationship with former Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, absconded after being sentenced to 45 years in prison for premeditated murder.
The Diyarbakır Mothers are group of families who claim that their sons and daughters have joined the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to fight as guerrillas, and who see the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) as being linked to the PKK in line with the rhetoric of the Turkish government, and so have organised regular sit-in protests outside the HDP’s Diyarbakır branch office calling for the return of their children.
Süleyman Soylu has been the biggest supporter of these protests, which have been going on since 2016. Soylu frequently visited the families outside the HDP building and made statements accusing the HDP of terrorism during his time as Interior Minister.
The Diyarbakır Mothers are also supported by the Turkish police, who escort them to their homes in the evenings, they are protected by the local prosecutor, and they are backed by the pro-government media, unlike the Saturday Mothers in Istanbul, who demand to know the whereabouts of their disappeared relatives, but whose weekly protests are suppressed by the police.
Analysts believe that the Diyarbakır Mothers was organised by the government both to smear the HDP and as a foil against the Saturday Mothers, who have been searching for relatives disappeared in custody since the 1990s, and the Peace Mothers, who campaign for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question.
Begdaş was notorious in the Diyarbakır Mothers for repeatedly attacking visitors to the HDP office and for verbally abusing opposition leaders who came to listen to the group. Often praised by pro-government media, he was also known for calling Soylu directly on his mobile phone during the sit-ins to ask for favours on issues such as transfers of police officers and soldiers or jobs to be provided to certain people.
On 4 May 2023, Begdaş, accompanied by government-appointed security police, went to the courthouse to lodge a criminal complaint against the HDP for “kidnapping young people and taking them to the mountains”, according to the Sözcü newspaper. However, as he entered the courthouse, Begdaş was stopped by the police carrying out a routine ID check on the door. When his records were checked, it was found that he had been sentenced to 45 years in prison by Izmir High Criminal Court No.4 for premeditated murder, and that this sentence had been ratified by the Court of Cassation.
Begdas also has 17 separate criminal convictions including intentional injury, threat, insult and looting. The court started to process him ready for transfer to prison, when he allegedly called Soylu to ask for help, claiming that FETÖ (Güven movement)* members had set him up. According to the Sözcü, Begdas escaped from two police officers took him out to transfer him to prison that evening. The two police officers said that their vehicle had broken down and Begdaş had taken the opportunity to open the back door, and though they warned him to stop, he had run into the side streets where they could not trace him in the darkness.
The two police officers were investigated but not charged. Begdaş was charged with absonding, and a further warrant was issued for his arrest. He has now been on the run for eight months.
About Celil Begdaş
Celil Begdaş, who has claimed variously that his son Yusuf Begdaş was abducted from the back door of the HDP branch office in a minibus decorated as a bridal vehicle and that he had been kidnapped through a tunnel dug through the HDP office, joined the group outside the HDP branch office in 2019.
Begdaş’s statements about his son made headlines in the mainstream media, and shortly after he joined the Diyarbakır Mothers he was hired as a cleaner at the city’s Bağlar Municipality, which is affiliated to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
*FETÖ (Güven movement) is an Islamist opposition movement attributed with Turkey’s 2015 failed coup and regarded by the Turkish state as a terrorist group.
