The father of Sümeyra Gelir, a young girl who tragically died last week, said in a recent interview that his daughter’s health had deteriorated due to the emotional strain caused by her mother’s imprisonment on Gülen-related charges.
Sümeyra Gelir was found dead in bed last Thursday the northwestern Turkish city of Sakarya, in an apparent epilepsy-related death. She had been caring for her two younger siblings since her mother, former physics teacher Melek Gelir, was serving a prison sentence on conviction of alleged ties to the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen.
Family members and rights advocates say the teenager, who suffered from epilepsy, struggled under the pressure of her living situation and the emotional toll of her mother’s imprisonment.
Speaking to the TR724 news website, Abdullah Gelir said his daughter Sümeyra was diagnosed with epilepsy after her mother’s imprisonment and had been receiving treatment for the past year.
“Sümeyra was a very sensitive child. When her mother was sent to prison she took over the care of her two brothers. While I was working, she would feed them, dress them and take them to school. But she would cry herself to sleep at night,” he said.
Gelir explained that Sümeyra had also been receiving psychological support from a doctor. “My daughter was just a teenager and she spent most of her adolescent years apart from her mother. I could never fill that void. Yes, we had family members around but nobody could fill the empty space of her mother.”
Melek Gelir, Sümeyra’s mother, is serving a prison sentence of almost seven years in Sakarya Ferizli Prison. Her conviction was based on her employment at a private tutoring center linked to the Gülen movement that was shut down by a post-coup emergency decree targeting institutions alleged to have ties to the movement.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement since corruption investigations revealed in December 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan 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 designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch in 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Melek Gelir was incarcerated approximately 120 kilometers from her children, which made it very difficult for her children to visit. Pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) lawmaker Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a prominent human rights advocate, said he repeatedly asked for Melek Gelir’s transfer to a facility closer to her children in Bolu but that those requests were denied.
“When I visited Melek Gelir in prison, she wept, begging to be moved closer to her children,” Gergerlioğlu wrote on X. “The justice ministry ignored her.”
Sümeyra’s father had dropped the children off with their grandparents, who live closer to the prison, to make it easier for them to visit their mother during the Eid holidays. Ultimately, the young girl died in her grandparents’ house.
The grieving father said his only consolation was that Sümeyra passed away at a moment of joy — surrounded by relatives, reunited with her cousins and having just seen her mother during a prison visit.
“At least my wife was granted permission to attend the funeral. She was able to stay until the end of the ceremony and hold her other children,” said Abdullah Gelir.
Human rights organizations have documented how this widespread incarceration has inflicted long-term harm on children. Many are left without one or both parents, often forced to live with extended family or in institutional care. The absence of stable parental support has contributed to documented cases of psychological trauma, depression and developmental issues. Some children have also been diagnosed with serious physical illnesses exacerbated by stress or lack of care.
Sümeyra’s death has drawn comparisons to other cases involving children of incarcerated parents. One widely reported case is that of Yusuf Kerim Sayın, a young boy who died in 2023 of a rare bone disease while his mother, also arrested over alleged Gülen links, was repeatedly denied release to care for him.
