The Platform of Democratic Institutions is organising a rally for ‘Democracy and Freedom’ in Batman. A banner reading ‘We are expanding our freedom march for a democratic solution to the Kurdish question’ was hung in the rally area where masses have already started to gather. The people are carrying banners reading ‘This is a public warning; evacuate the municipalities’, ‘No passage to the trustee, the trustee is plunder’ and ‘The solution and the interlocutor are clear’.

People coming from neighbouring cities for the rally met at Diyarbakır Street and Hasankeyf Junction. While the team from Sirt entered the area with a banner reading ‘We will win by resisting against the usurpation of will, not trustees but democracy’, a large number of women, including the Peace Mothers, who gathered in the Free Women’s Movement (Tevgera Jinên Azad, TJA) cortège, gathered at Yılmaz Güney Park. 

Prevented from passing through the checkpoint, the people coming from Hasankeyf got out of their vehicles and marched towards Batman, chanting the slogan ‘We will win by resisting’.   

Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) Co-Chair Tülay Hatimoğulları and Democratic Regions Party (DBP) Co-Chairperson Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar also arrived at the rally site.

Those who set out from Mardin and Şırnak were also intercepted by Turkish troops in the district of Gercüş. The people started to march towards Batman, chanting the slogans ‘Bijî berxwedana Batmanê’ and ‘Berxwedan xweş doz e’.