The human cost of a recent government crackdown on the Gülen movement was criticized during a parliamentary speech by Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a deputy from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), who condemned the unlawful incarceration of both women and men as unacceptable.
In May hundreds of people across the country — including pregnant women and female students — were detained over alleged links to the Gülen movement. The most prominent case occurred in Gaziantep province, where 320 individuals were taken into custody earlier this month, of whom 77 were subsequently arrested.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as members of his family and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began pursuing its followers. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch in 2016, which he accused the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement he inspired strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
One of the female students arrested in Gaziantep attempted to take her own life on four separate occasions.
“She can’t continue her education because she was arrested, and due to the stress she’s been under, she attempted to take her own life. Thank God she survived. Right now, she’s hospitalized in a psychiatric facility in Adana. Think about the situation of other young people. This is simply unacceptable,” Gergerlioğlu said in his address to parliament.
Gergerlioğlu said it was unacceptable that hundreds of students were detained on trumped-up charges and that their studies were interrupted. He explained that Turkey’s Higher Education Board (YÖK) had issued a circular saying that jailed students in their final year could not take their exams.
“Article 42 of the constitution says every citizen has the right to education. You’ve imprisoned someone for whatever reason, but why are you violating their constitutional right to education? How is this acceptable?” he said.
The suffering of those imprisoned over alleged Gülen links extends beyond students, as families have given interviews recounting the hardships their loved ones face behind bars.
The mother of Hatice Doğru, who is four months pregnant, said her daughter was threatened by police with having her baby taken away immediately after birth. During her interrogation, she was also subjected to insults and called an idiot.
“My daughter suffers from heart arrhythmia. She previously had a miscarriage at six months. What if she loses this baby, too?” the mother asked. “Where is justice? How can they treat a pregnant woman like this?”
Journalist Sevinç Özarslan reported that Hatice Doğru was being held in a cell with 30 other women. “How can a pregnant woman with a high-risk pregnancy be forced to stay in an overcrowded prison cell?” she asked. “We also learned that the inmates were not given warm water to shower and received insufficient food, largely due to overcrowding. And yet, this is what the interior minister takes pride in.”
According to a statement from Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç ahead of the eighth anniversary of the coup attempt last July, a total of 705,172 people have been investigated since the failed coup on terrorism or coup-related charges due to their alleged links to the movement. Tunç said at the time that there were 13,251 people in prison in pretrial detention or convicted of terrorism in Gülen-linked trials.
These figures are thought to have increased over the past 10 months since the operations targeting Gülen followers continue unabated. Erdoğan and several government ministers said on many occasions that there would be no “slackening” in the fight against the movement following the cleric’s death at 83.
