Detained Woman Covers 50 Km Twice A Day To Feed One-Year Old Baby In Turkey

Date posted: June 6, 2017

Şule Akkaya, a primary school teacher who was detained on June 1, 2017 as part of an investigation into the Gülen group, reportedly covers 40 to 50 km twice a day to breastfeed her one-year-old baby in Zonguldak.

According to TR724 news portal, Şule Akkaya, whose husband has been held in prison for almost eleven months over alleged links to the Gülen movement, was detained by police in Zonguldak and then taken to Ereğli, a district located some 50 kilometers from where she was detained.

Akkaya, who has four kids aged 1 to 10, has reportedly accompanied by police every day from Ereğli Police Station to her house in Zonguldak to feed the baby and fulfil the needs of the children.

Due to a government-backed witch-hunt against the Gülen movement, which Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accuses of being behind a failed coup on July 15, 2016, numerous human tragedies have been reported in Turkey.

Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.

According to a report by the state-run Anadolu news agency on May 28, 154,694 individuals have been detained and 50,136 have been jailed due to alleged Gülen links since the failed coup attempt.

Source: Stockholm Center for Freedom , June 6, 2017