A former police officer imprisoned for links to the Gülen movement has been denied parole despite being eligible for the past five months, the Kronos news website reported.
Former police officer Nilay Dağ was arrested in January 2020 to serve a more than six-year prison sentence. She was sent to Tokat T-type Prison, where she complained about the terrible conditions. According to her family, the prison administration arbitrarily revoked her right to parole because of these complaints.
Dağ’s husband, Bilal Dağ, said the family was devasted by her prolonged imprisonment. “The prison administration is acting with hate and revenge,” he said. “My wife’s mental well-being has deteriorated from this extended time in prison.”
Turkish President Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Turkish cleric Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and 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 a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity.
According to the Turkish Penal Code, people convicted of membership in a terrorist organization are eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of their sentence.
In recent years, many human rights defenders have highlighted the increasingly frequent denial of parole to eligible inmates by prison monitoring boards on such grounds as the inmates’ purported failure to “display remorse,” particularly in the cases of political prisoners.
