Gambetti 97on both sides, the war also produced a consciousness-raising effect on
part of the Turkish public. During the course of fifteen gruesome years, a
fact that had long been suppressed from hegemonic Turkish discourses—
that Turkish “normality” was characterized by the oppression of Kurdish
identity—was forcefully brought to the attention of a significant number
of Turkish intellectuals and activists. The following avowal, coming from a
prominent journalist, may be said to represent the état d’âme of a portion
of the Turkish intelligentsia:
In Turkey, neither journalists nor the press fulfilled their duties
with respect to the Kurdish or the Southeastern problem. The
number of those who did remained low. I admit it. As a gradu-
ate of political science, I did not know what the Kurdish prob-
lem was. It was only when the PKK entered the political scene
that I started to learn ... If, at that time, we could have exposed
the Diyarbakir Military Prison as the horrible space in which
crimes against humanity were being perpetrated ... maybe cer-
tain things could have been different in Turkey.^17Gradually breaking out of its communitarian confines, the “Kurdish
problem” evolved into a problem of democracy and minority rights, thus
mobilizing a portion of “ethnic Turks.” Several unions and civil associa-
tions picked up the cause. Among other instances of collective mobili-
zation that modified the terms of the struggle by redefining norms and
structures in the second half of the 1990s was the Saturday Mothers’ Vigil
inspired by the Chilean Mothers. A group of Turkish and Kurdish moth-
ers whose sons had either disappeared or been victims of extrajudicial
executions sat for over two hundred Saturdays at the heart of Istanbul to
demand explanations from authorities. Politicizing the hitherto “private”
domains of womanhood and motherhood, the vigil mustered support
from among leftist and feminist groups. Statements made by public fig-
ures, novelists and businessmen calling for an end to military operations,
as well as pop concerts and music albums that promoted peace contrib-
uted to attracting more and more attention to the human dimension of
the armed conflict. Such activities were particularly important as they
appealed to the broader public. They could not stop the Turkish state from
pursuing military operations in the Southeast, but they created a space of