A Turkish teacher who was nine months pregnant has given birth while being held in pretrial detention in a case that has sparked criticism over the country’s treatment of women in custody and the government’s broad use of counterterrorism laws, Turkish Minute reported.
According to a report by Sevinç Özarslan of the TR724 news website, Merve Zayım, a 37-year-old religious education teacher, gave birth to a baby boy on Monday morning at Trakya University Hospital in Turkey’s western Edirne province after being transferred from Edirne L-Type Prison, where she had been held since July 2. She was taken into custody in early July while attempting to flee Turkey. She had been held throughout the final weeks of her pregnancy, despite appeals for her release and clear provisions in Turkish law that normally shield pregnant women from imprisonment.
Zayım had been sentenced to more than six years in prison on charges of membership in the faith-based Gülen movement. She was convicted based on her employment at a now-shuttered Gülen-linked private school, alleged use of the encrypted ByLock messaging app and witness statements. Her appeal has been pending before the Supreme Court of Appeals for more than three years.
Under Turkish law, women who are pregnant or who have given birth within the past 18 months cannot be made to serve prison sentences. Article 16(4) of the Law on the Execution of Sentences stipulates that incarceration must be postponed for the duration of pregnancy and until the child is 18 months old.
However, these protections apply only after a sentence has become final. In practice, courts have ordered the pretrial detention of pregnant women while their cases are still under appeal, arguing that the postponement rule does not extend to pretrial custody.
Critics say this interpretation undermines both the spirit of the law and international standards such as the United Nations’ “Bangkok Rules,” which call for non-custodial measures for pregnant women and mothers with young children.
Zayım’s husband stressed this contradiction in interviews with Turkish outlets. “Even if her sentence is finalized, she should be granted s postponement of execution because she’s pregnant. Yet despite that, they keep her detained before any final ruling,” he said.
Eight-year ordeal
Zayım graduated in 2012 from Marmara University’s faculty of theology and later worked at Samanyolu Gülbahar High School in Eskişehir, one of thousands of schools shut down in 2016 when the Turkish government declared the Gülen movement a terrorist group and blamed it for a failed coup two months later. Since then, more than 300,000 people have been detained on alleged links to the movement, often based on tenuous evidence such as mobile apps, bank accounts or employment records.
In her court statements Zayım recounted how the case has consumed her family life. “My first child was only 32 days old when I was first taken into custody,” she told the judges. “Now I am eight-and-a-half-months pregnant. This case has been going on for eight years. I surrendered with my husband to the gendarmes. I can’t raise a newborn like this [in prison].”
Her pleas did not persuade the court. The Eskişehir 2nd High Criminal Court rejected release requests five times.
Rights advocate Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu. a member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and a physician by profession, visited Zayım in prison earlier this month and described her conditions as “unfit for a pregnant woman.” He said she shared a crowded cell with several others, lacked access to proper prenatal care and should have been released pending trial.
Rights groups have long criticized Turkey’s detention of pregnant women and mothers with infants. According to the Stockholm Center for Freedom, at least 80 pregnant women were arrested or detained in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt. Many were denied adequate healthcare, and in some cases newborns were separated from their mothers.
The case highlights the broader problem of Turkey’s expansive use of pretrial detention, particularly in politically sensitive trials. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly ruled against Turkey for holding defendants without sufficient evidence or for excessively long periods.
As of Monday evening, Zayım remained under guard in the hospital with her newborn and was expected to be returned to prison once discharged unless the court reverses its position.