The husband of Özlem Düzenli, a young mother imprisoned with her 7-month-old infant, said in a social media post that prison conditions have become unbearable due to poor hygiene and the lack of nutritious food for both mother and child.
During his most recent prison visit, İbrahim Düzenli said his wife, visibly distressed, told him she had no strength left in her arms from constantly holding their baby since there was no clean or safe space to lay him down. They were frequently subjected to water outages, making it extremely difficult to maintain hygiene, and the baby was not provided with age-appropriate supplementary food.
Özlem Düzenli had been sentenced to seven years in prison over alleged links to the Gülen movement and was freed from custody while waiting for the Supreme Court of Appeals to review her case.
Düzenli was detained on May 10 in the town of İpsala, Edirne province, near the Greek border, as she and her husband sought to leave the country out of fear that the appeals court would uphold the sentence and she would be sent to prison. While he was released, she was transported to Edirne L-Type Closed Prison along with their infant son, Murat Efe.
The Supreme Court of Appeals recently overturned Özlem Düzenli’s conviction for lack of evidence linking her to any crime; however, she has not yet been released.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, 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.
Özlem Düzenli was accused of depositing money in Bank Asya, a now-closed financial institution linked to the Gülen movement, and for using ByLock, an encrypted messaging application that was widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Her incarceration is a violation of Law No. 5275, which stipulates that pregnant women and mothers with children under 18 months should typically be allowed to remain free pending trial.
