A member of the founding Assembly explained " We had come together to say that the dirty war should come to an end and that there should be peace among Turks and Kurds.
In the words of Türkiye Bozkurt " In 1999 we came together as mothers, whose children were either in the mountains, in prisons or had lost their lives in the war.
The lawyer who defended them, Eren Keskin, was later put on trial for having insulted the army after her description of the alleged torture of the Peace Mothers was published in a newspaper.
[4][5] In June 2006, Peace Mother activists Muyesser Gunes and Sakine Arat were sentenced to 1-year jail each and 600 YTL in Ankara 4th Criminal Court on a charge of praising a separatist organisation and its leader, after they had visited the General Staff headquarters on 22 August 2005 to present their case.
[6] In July 2006, twenty-four Peace Mothers aged between 40 and 75 years, were sentenced to 12 months’ jail by the Diyarbakır 4th Criminal Court after being found guilty of voicing "separatist propaganda".