The recent remand to prison of Melek İpek, the 78-year-old mother of self-exiled Turkish businessman Akın İpek, led to additional attention to the Turkish government’s continued use of family punishment against political opponents.
İpek, who suffers from multiple health issues, was arrested Saturday in Ankara and transferred to Sincan Prison to serve a sentence of more than six years for ties to the faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the movement since corruption investigations in 2013 that 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 targeting its members.
İpek’s arrest is part of a broader pattern documented in a Stockholm Center for Freedom’s (SCF) report, which described cases where Turkey has used “family punishment” to target relatives of dissidents as a form of pressure, likening the tactic to the Nazi-era practice of Sippenhaft.
The SCF report argues that by extending punitive measures to family members, the Turkish government aims to suppress dissent and discourage critical reporting, including from relatives abroad. The report highlights cases of other well-known figures whose family members were similarly detained or harassed, including former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom, ex-soccer star Hakan Şükür and journalist Can Dündar. Dündar’s wife, for example, faced travel restrictions in Turkey after he exposed alleged arms transfers to Syria by Turkish intelligence.
Koza İpek Holding and numerous valuable personal assets were seized by the government in 2015. Akın İpek, the holding company founder, was in the UK at the time and decided not to return to Turkey. The Turkish government subsequently filed a formal extradition request for İpek that was rejected by a UK court.
The İpek family has faced legal challenges and government scrutiny since Turkey branded the Gülen movement a terrorist organization in 2015. Several members of the İpek family have been charged with crimes. An Ankara court handed down a prison sentence of 79 years, eight months for Cafer Tekin İpek, Akın İpek’s brother, and he has been behind bars initially in pretrial detention since April 2016.
Sippenhaft, also known as family punishment or kin punishment, is a legal concept describing practices often observed in authoritarian regimes, where family members are held accountable for offenses committed by one of their relatives. Originating in a practice of the Middle Ages that was revived by the Nazis during World War II, this concept has been applied in various forms throughout history across different societies.
Traditionally, family punishment has been employed as a means of extending punishment beyond the responsible individual to encompass their immediate family members, including parents, spouses, siblings and children. The underlying rationale is to establish a strong deterrent by penalizing the alleged offender’s family, thereby dissuading others from engaging in similar conduct.
In today’s world, family punishment continues to be employed by authoritarian regimes seeking to suppress dissent and maintain control. Among many examples, in countries like North Korea, where loyalty to the ruling regime is critical, the threat of collective punishment helped create a culture of silence, making people hesitant to express dissent due to the fear of repercussions extending to their family members. Similarly, the Chinese government’s persecution of Uighur Muslims includes family punishment, resulting in the widespread detention of family members to suppress religious and ethnic identity.
