Local municipality officials in western Turkey denied funeral service and funeral vehicle for six people, including three babies, who drowned while attempting to reach Greek island of Lesbos in a bid to flee persecution in their home country.
Workers who were fired from their jobs at İzmir’s Ege University lost their jobs because they had a baby or received medical treatment at the now-closed, Gülen-linked Şifa Hospital in İzmir, according to a report in the Evrensel daily on Friday.
“Our decision to come to Greece developed very suddenly. I did not want to leave my country that I loved so much. Especially it gives different meaning if you have your parents and relatives still live there. It was very difficult to leave the country, but the persecution was also accelerated on the one hand. Every day, we read news about tortures under custody and prisons on the media…
The latest victim of the Turkish government’s tactic of guilt by association with the purpose of blackmail is Semra Çakır, a 41-year-old teacher, and her 2-year-old daughter Zeynep Şura Çakır as part of its massive post-coup witch-hunt targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement.
When will the world pay heed to the humanitarian crisis on Erdoğan’s home turf that engulfs more innocent people by the day, even crying babies? Erdoğan’s paranoid purge of perceived political enemies has landed hundreds of babies and toddlers behind bars, sometimes arresting mothers on the very day they have given birth.
“We were all treated like terrorists, we were isolated,” Kam, a 34-year-old university teacher, told Fox News from Germany, where she and her family are now refugees. “We were all humiliated. … I don’t know what was worse, to have my baby in the prison or to have my other son, who was 11, outside the prison.”
In August 2017, the news outlet TR724 revealed that there are 668 children under the age of six in Turkey’s prisons. 149 of these children are under twelve months old, and there are many others under the age of eighteen. These statistics are even more appalling when one considers the horrible prison conditions and extent of torture in post-coup Turkey.