For nearly five years Güldane Gökkaya fed her blind, severely disabled son by syringe, lifted him in and out of bed by herself and raised her two children alone — while her husband was in a Turkish prison on charges the family describes as politically motivated.
Halit Gökkaya, a former police officer dismissed after a coup attempt in 2016, saw his son only once during his incarceration. Prison authorities refused to permit a custom wheelchair into the facility, while long journeys posed serious health risks for the child. He filed repeated petitions to be transferred to a prison in Kahramanmaraş, where his family lives, but the authorities rejected them, leaving long visits medically risky and often impossible.
Now free after serving almost five years behind bars, Gökkaya and his wife say the authorities ignored repeated pleas for his release, leaving their son’s care entirely to his mother.
The couple shared their story on Tuesday in an interview broadcast on KHK TV’s YouTube channel, a platform dedicated to people dismissed from public service under government decrees following the coup attempt.
Gökkaya was fired from the police force and later sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison on charges of membership in a terrorist organization over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement. He was released five months ago.
During her husband’s imprisonment Güldane Gökkaya said she struggled to survive emotionally and financially while caring for their son, Hakan Esat, who is now 11. Born with cerebral palsy and epilepsy, the child is blind, cannot walk or speak and must be fed special nutritional formulas administered via syringe. The couple also has a 5-year-old daughter.
“We were damaged in every sense — psychologically, financially and emotionally,” she said.
Güldane herself was the subject of a criminal investigation because she stayed in student houses and dormitories affiliated with the Gülen movement while attending university, though the probe was closed without charges. She said her husband was prosecuted in what she described as a politically motivated case, based on arbitrary evidence, including books and copies of the Qur’an cited as proof of terrorism.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following the abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Throughout Gökkaya’s imprisonment, Güldane campaigned on social media for his release while he filed petitions from inside the prison. Each new judicial reform package raised their hopes, she said, only to end in disappointment.
Since his release Gökkaya has been trying to rebuild his life, tending to his brother’s livestock while searching for flexible work that would allow him to help care for his children.
The crackdown led to mass dismissals, arrests and prosecutions across Turkey. Following the coup attempt, the government declared a state of emergency that remained in effect until July 2018 and carried out a large-scale purge under the banner of an anti-coup fight.
According to the latest figures from the Justice Ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted of alleged links to the movement since 2016, with 11,085 still in prison. Legal proceedings are ongoing for more than 24,000 individuals, while another 58,000 remain under active investigation nearly a decade later.
In addition to those jailed, thousands fled Turkey to avoid prosecution.
Now reunited, Halit and Güldane Gökkaya say they hope he will one day be reinstated and that other imprisoned parents will be released to reunite with their children.
They say they will never forgive those responsible for their suffering — adding that even if they could, their children never would.
