Ramazan Aktaş, a former history teacher dismissed under an emergency decree in the aftermath of a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and imprisoned over alleged ties to the faith-based Gülen movement, died of late-stage pancreatic cancer on Monday shortly after a delayed release from prison despite his doctor’s earlier warnings.
According to the TR724 news website, Aktaş had persistent health complaints since May 2024, but he was not granted a six-month deferral of his sentence until April 2025, by which time his cancer had advanced to a terminal stage.
His wife, Sümeyye Aktaş, said her husband became ill in the notorious high-security Silivri Prison, a facility long associated with the incarceration of government critics, opposition figures and dissidents, and known for its poor conditions, including overcrowding, inadequate ventilation and insufficient nutrition, and began complaining of intense back pain while there.
Aktaş was held in a ward designed for a handful of people but packed with over 40 inmates. “There were days with no hot water no heating, and barely any sunlight,” Sümeyye said.
In December 2024 Aktaş was transferred to Burdur Prison without explanation. There, his condition worsened dramatically. After suffering severe nausea and vomiting blood, he was taken to a hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with stage 4 pancreatic cancer that had already spread to his liver and nervous system.
After doctors at Akdeniz University Hospital found him too weak for chemotherapy due to liver failure on April 22, Aktaş was slated to be returned to prison, and only last-minute pleas from his family delayed the transfer.
Aktaş was arrested in November 2017 over alleged links to the Gülen movement and sentenced to more than 17 years in prison. His case was pending at the European Court of Human Rights.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as some of his family members 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 an 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.
Following the failed coup, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, and more than 24,000 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
Aktaş had exhausted all domestic remedies, and his case had been pending before the European Court of Human Rights at the time of his death.
A report by the Human Rights Association revealed there were currently at least 1,412 sick inmates, including hundreds who are critically ill, being held in prison.
The report, based on information gathered from prisoner families, lawyers and prison visits, found that 335 prisoners are in critical condition, with 230 unable to manage their basic daily needs by themselves.
Additionally, 1,026 inmates died in Turkish prisons between July 2023 and December 2024.
