A 73-year-old inmate who was convicted over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement and lost his ability to speak in prison can continue serving his sentence despite multiple serious health problems, a Turkish hospital said in a medical report.
According to the TR724 news website, a health board at Tekirdağ Dr. İsmail Fehmi Cumalıoğlu City Hospital reported on May 7, 2026, that Abdullah Tırpan suffers from multiple chronic and acute conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, neuropathy and vision problems. The board said he is able to carry out daily activities without assistance and that there is no medical necessity to suspend his sentence on grounds of health.
Turkey’s Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) had previously ruled on December 17, 2025, that Tırpan was fit to remain in prison, rejecting a request to suspend his sentence on health grounds.
Under Turkey’s Law on the Execution of Sentences and Security Measures, courts may suspend the sentence of a prisoner who, due to a serious illness or disability, cannot sustain life in prison conditions and who is not considered a serious or concrete danger to society. Rights groups say the provision is very rarely applied in practice.
Tırpan was first detained on August 16, 2016, during a crackdown that followed a failed coup a month earlier and spent some 19 months in pretrial detention before being sentenced by the Tekirdağ 3rd High Criminal Court. He was released pending appeal and re-arrested on February 25, 2025, after Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals upheld his seven-and-a-half-year sentence. Tırpan has been unable to speak since February 12 of this year.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
