While millions of children were celebrating the National Sovereignty and Children’s Day on April 23 with joy, there were hundreds of children who were barred by Turkish government to have their very natural rights of spending time which their parents who are kept in prisons basing on trivial accusations without showing any solid evidence.
One of the children who were persecuted by the regime of autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was 4-year old H.A.. Minutes before paying a visit to her jailed father early morning on Sunday, H.A. was photographed by her mother in front of Sakarya L Type Prison as wearing a T-shirt bearing a photo of her newborn baby brother.
Her mother couldn’t bring the newly born infant himself to visit due to strict regulations. Therefore, baby brother’s photo was printed on the T-shirt of his 4 year-old elder sister H.A. to show him to their imprisoned father. The father was reportedly arrested as part of post-coup witch hunt targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement.
Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement despite the lack of any evidence to that effect.
Although the Gülen movement strongly denies having any role in the putsch, the government accuses it of having masterminded the foiled coup. Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, called for an international investigation into the coup attempt, 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 statement by Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on April 2, a total of 113,260 people have been detained as part of investigations into the Gülen movement since the July 15 coup attempt, while 47,155 were put into pre-trial detention. (SCF with turkeypurge.com) April 24, 2017
