Leyla Tekin, whose 8-year-old son, Ahmet Tuna, and 6-year-old daughter, Dilruba, are still missing, says that she still holds out hope that her children will surface. Search efforts are ongoing, but no good or bad news has been obtained, she said. Calling out to any possible kidnappers to return her children, the teary-eyed mother said: “It’s been 100 days since my children went missing. The last 100 days have seemed like 100 years for us; we’ve been going through the pain of our children’s absence every single one of these 100 days. I wouldn’t want anyone to have to go through anything like this. I’m saying again to those who abducted my children: Please, just let them go, they’re so little.” The children’s father, Hamza Tekin, who suffers from heart problems, lamented: “Because of what happened to my children, my health has been affected. I just want them to come back; my health is of no importance whatsoever. Without being able to be with them, what use is my health?”The children’s paternal grandmother, Hayriye Güroğlu, also had a plea for the kidnappers: “What do they want from my grandchildren? They should just let them go; we won’t complain to anyone or take any legal action. All they have to do is let them go in some secret location.”
Özlem Tekin, the mother of the oldest of the three children who went missing, 12-year-old Türkan, says that as time goes on, the family’s pain gets deeper. “My daughter’s been gone for 100 days. I miss her smell, I miss her voice. In 100 days, our pain has increased 100-fold. My daughter’s school uniform and backpack are waiting for her atop her bed,” she said.
The three children had left home on the second day of Eid al-Fitr to collect candy from neighbors in accordance with tradition, but were never seen again. Hundreds of police officers from Kayseri’s central and Talas districts have been keeping up the search, performing thousands of interviews and searching dozens of vehicles and 1,900 homes, in addition to local parks, wells and fields, but still have no leads.
