A woman and her three children went missing after a boat carrying several Turkish asylum seekers who fled Turkey due to an ongoing government crackdown on followers of the Gülen movement capsized in the Evros River along the Turkey-Greece border on Wednesday night, Euronews Turkish reported.
“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…
A.T.S told that their next plan was to live in a state where no pressure and tyranny would harm them anymore. “We want to go to a country where we can live humanely, where our children can receive good education, where there is no pressure and tyranny.”
Esma Uludağ, a 35-year-old Turkish woman who fled to Greece due to an ongoing government-led crackdown on the followers of the Gülen movement, died of a heart attack on Saturday night as she was waiting to join her husband in Germany.
Halime Gülsu, who was arrested on Feb. 20, 2018 for allegedly helping the faith-based Gülen movement, died on Saturday in prison in Mersin province, reportedly due to deprivation of the medication she took for lupus erythematosus.
The Turkish government detained more than 70 women on Wednesday evening in five provinces across Turkey as part of a investigation targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement. It was claimed that the detained women have been helping financially to the relatives of those who were jailed or escaped from the persecution of the Turkish government.
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.