39 MPs from New Zealand wrote a letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç, and Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya on the eve of the 1000th gathering of the Saturday Mothers, urging them to allow the meeting without any obstructions. 

The Saturday Mothers will hold their 1000th gathering tomorrow, 25 May, at Galatasaray Square in Istanbul, to demand accountability for their relatives who were lost or killed in custody in the 1980s and 1990s. 

The MPs underlined the repression the Saturday Mothers/People faced despite the peaceful nature of their long-standing demonstrations.

The 700th meeting of the Saturday Mothers/People in 2018 was violently dispersed by police. Galatasaray Square has since been closed to the public to prevent the Saturday Mothers from meeting there, despite being one of the most central locations in the city. 

This, in fact, violated the April 2023 Constitutional Court rulings, which found that banning gatherings was unconstitutional. 

The MPs listed demands from the president and deputies regarding freedom of assembly, persecution, and demands of the Saturday Mothers. "Turkish officials must implement the Constitutional Court's rulings and take immediate measures to allow the Saturday Mothers to meet at Galatasaray Square," urged the MPs.