One of the brothers of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, Kutbettin Gülen, who was arrested in October, is being deprived of medications despite suffering from heart disease and high blood pressure, tr724 news website reported on Saturday.
According to the report, seventy-year-old Kutbettin Gülen, who was working for a printing house in İzmir, has been held in solitary confinement cell since October 2.
Gülen, who has also a herniated disk complaint, has not been given the permission to see his family for months until his daughter has recently been allowed to visit.
His daughter has not recognized her father, who has lost much weight and could walk only with the support of two guardians.
The lawyer of Gülen has told tr724 that instead of the medications which he has to use, he might have been given strong and mortal medications. His family is worried of losing him if these conditions in prison persist.
Turkey survived a controversial coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that killed over 240 people. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting participants of the Gülen movement in jails.
Turkey has suspended or dismissed more than 150,000 judges, teachers, police and civil servants since July 15. At least 161,751 people were detained or investigated and 50,334 people were arrested in Turkey in the framework of the Turkish government’s massive post-coup witch hunt campaign targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement since the controversial coup attempt on July 15, 2016, according to statistics reported by state-run Anadolu news agency by basing on information taken from the officials from Turkey’s Justice Minsitry on June 13. (turkishminute.com) July 2, 2017
