A woman was detained less than 24 hours after delivering a baby yesterday for alleged affiliation with the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen. Betül Uluçam, 34, was detained in the hospital where she had given birth less than a day before.
Fatma Aşkın, a breast cancer patient who was arrested on Feb.14 in the southeastern Turkish province of Gaziantep due to her alleged links to the Gülen movement, has experienced a spread of the disease during her one-month stay in prison and has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Seynur Özdemir, a Turkish woman from Ankara, suffers from soft tissue sarcoma, a rare type of cancer that begins in the tissues that connect, support and surround other body structures. She however has been held in Ankara’s Sİncan prison since June 2019 on terror and coup charges.
Büşra Öztürk, the mother of a 22-day-old baby, was detained in Ankara on Wednesday for alleged links to the Gülen movement. Turkish law requires postponement of the arrest of pregnant women until they give birth and the infant reaches the age of six months.
A high-profile critic of the Turkish government has described the jailing of his 75-year-old mother and brother to a combined 91-year sentence as “ludicrous” and “perverse”. Akin Ipek said the ‘human rights abuses’ against his family were unacceptable in any civilised country.
Parents of four Bedia Baş and Abdülkadir Baş, who were arrested on terrorism charges in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016 due to their alleged links to the Gülen movement, were not allowed to see their children during the first nine months of their incarceration.
Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a member of parliament from Turkey’s left wing pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said the health care benefits of a gravely disabled woman were cut off because her son-in-law was a public servant dismissed from his job by government decree.
Hanife Çiftçi, who was jailed in June when she was seven weeks pregnant due to her alleged links to the Gülen movement, lost her unborn baby and was sent back to prison from the hospital on the same day, the tr724 news website reported on Wednesday.
Huseyin Sahnaz is seriously worried about his wife and infant child. After all, prisons are not exactly family-friendly institutions. Both have to share a cell with 30 other inmates. And temperatures during this time of year tend to reach 30 degrees Celsius (around 90 Fahrenheit) or higher.
A Turkish philosophy teacher, named Yasin, has said in a video documentary that his wife had to give birth to their 4th child at home due to an arrest warrant the government issued against them over their suspected ties to the Gulen movement.