Families want their kids back from PKK

DİYARBAKIR

A group of families holds a sit-in protest in front of the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality, claiming that the PKK has kidnapped their children. AA photo

A group of families on May 20 began a sit-in protest in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır Municipality, expressing their anger at the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which allegedly kidnapped their children.

Families carried photographs of their children and placards reading, ”Kids should hold pencils, not guns,” and “15-year-olds don’t have political ideas.”

Families told reporters they would continue their actions until their children were found.

They said in a press meeting a day earlier that two boys and one girl at the age of 15 went missing.
Safiye Gündüz said she had not heard from her daughter for 27 days.

Families say two of the children were deceived by PKK members during a picnic in Diyarbakır on April 23 and taken to join the PKK forces. Another child from southern Adana did not return from an April 4 meeting in southwestern Şanlıurfa, where the child had gone to join a demonstration to mark the birthday of the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan.