A former Turkish academic was sent to prison along with her 20-month-old daughter to serve a six-year sentence for alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the Kronos news website reported on Wednesday.
Hatice Kaya was sent to a prison in Manisa province on August 23 after the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld her sentence. She was accused of depositing money in the now-closed Bank Asya.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement after an abortive putsch in July 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
According to the Turkish government having an account at Bank Asya, one of Turkey’s largest commercial banks at the time, is a benchmark for identifying and arresting alleged followers of the movement on charges of membership in a terrorist organization. This is despite a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling in a previous case that stipulates using or having an account at Bank Asya does not constitute a criminal offense.
Kaya’s incarceration was harshly criticized on X by Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, an MP from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).
“Today, she [Kaya] entered Manisa Prison with her baby Neva. Worse still, the father is also in jail,” Gergerlioğlu said. “Our proposal to prevent parents from being imprisoned simultaneously was rejected by the ruling coalition.”
A relative of Kaya expressed outrage over the arrest, saying the young mother was abruptly taken by the counterterrorism police with her daughter. “The child is now in prison with her mother, and we’ve heard that she was denied additional milk.”
The number of children accompanying their mothers in prison skyrocketed in Turkey in the aftermath of the coup attempt, when thousands of women were arrested due to their alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
There are currently 552 children aged six years and under currently residing in Turkish prisons, according to the Civil Society in the Penal System Association (CİSST).
A 2022 report published by CİSST also found that these children were deprived of basic necessities.
Previous reports have also underlined that Turkish prisons do not accommodate the needs of children and infants. Most prisons do not provide crayons, toys or carpets for crawling babies. Many children do not have their own beds and share their mothers’ food.
