A German-Turkish mother on Wednesday continued her protest outside the German Chancellery to demand the return of her daughter who was forcibly recruited by PKK terrorists.
Maide T. was flanked by a group of supporters who wore T-shirts with a picture of her daughter Nilufer T. with the words “kidnapped by PKK.”
The protesters held a banner saying: “Please, help me rescue my daughter from the PKK” at a time when ministers held a Cabinet meeting inside.
“I want them to reach out to me,” she told reporters, saying she has been protesting for months but German authorities have not contacted her so far.
In late May, she called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to help her out.
Inviting people to stand in solidarity with her, she said her daughter was influenced by PKK propaganda after she visited a cultural center in Berlin last year. Thereafter, she was forcibly recruited and probably sent to a terror camp abroad.
“If they will come under pressure, they will release my daughter within 24 hours,” she said, urging German authorities to take action against the group.
The PKK has been banned in Germany since 1993, but it remains active, with nearly 14,500 followers among the country’s Kurdish immigrant population.
The terror group uses recruitment tactics among Kurdish communities across Europe, including blackmailing with the safety of family members.
Turkey has long criticized German authorities for not taking serious measures against the PKK which uses the country as a platform for their fundraising, propaganda and recruitment activities.
In its more than 40-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, has been responsible for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.
One of the terrorist group’s commonly known practices is to recruit under-age children forcibly by abducting them from their families.
In Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakır province, dozens of families have been staging a protest for almost a year now, demanding their children back from the terrorist group.
The protest started when Hacire Akar turned up at the doorstep of the pro-PKK People’s Democratic Party (HDP)’s Diyarbakır office one night. A week later, on Sept. 3, 2019, families inspired by Akar transformed her solo stance into a collective sit-in protest. Akar’s son, Mehmet, returned home on Aug. 24, showing other families that there is still hope.
Since then, the number of protesting mothers has grown as they demand the return of their children, who, they say, were deceived or kidnapped by the terror group.
Nine families, whose children were kidnapped by the terrorist group, have been reunited with their sons and daughters so far.
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