Detained hours after giving birth at a private hospital in İstanbul early on Tuesday, a woman named Ayşe Kaya has been transferred to a police station in Edirne, a northwestern province some 240 kilometers away from home.
According to tweets posted by main opposition Republican People’s Party deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu, 30-year-old woman gave birth to a baby at Eslife Private Hospital in İstanbul’s Esenyurt district early on Tuesday, and transferred to Edirne after being detained by police with her newborn baby later the same day as part of an investigation into Turkey’s Gülen group.
“Why would not you interrogate a woman who gave birth yesterday through SEGBIS system? Why would she be transferred to Edirne with her baby? What is with this hostility towards your own citizen?” the deputy tweeted on Wednesday.
The Turkish government has systematically been detaining women on coup charges either when they are pregnant or shortly after giving birth. This incident is the second in a week and 16th in the past 9 months.
On Monday, a group of police officers detained Derya Gül hours after she gave birth at Avrupa Hospital in the southern province of Adana.
More than 17,000 women in Turkey, many with small children, have been jailed in an unprecedented crackdown and subjected to torture and ill-treatment in detention centers and prisons as part of the government’s systematic campaign of intimidation and persecution of critics and opponents, a report titled “Jailing Women In Turkey: Systematic Campaign of Persecution and Fear” released in April by SCF has revealed.
Dozens of human tragedies in Turkey have been reported, part of the government witch-hunt against the Gülen movement, which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with Turkey’s corrupt and autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accuse of being behind a controversial coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
Turkey survived a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the AKP government along with Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen group, inspired by US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. The group denies the accusations. (SCF with turkishminute.com) July 27, 2017
