The story of Özge Elif Hendekci, a lawyer who was previously imprisoned in Turkey along with her child on charges of links to the Gülen movement, highlights the notoriously unfavorable conditions for children accompanying their mothers behind bars.
Currently living in Europe after spending five years in prison, Hendekci spoke to The Arrested Lawyers Initiative, a Brussels-based human rights group, in an interview titled “Tiny Hands, Big Walls: Story of a Turkish Mother and a Baby in Prison.”
A defense lawyer from the İstanbul Bar Association, Hendekci was imprisoned in late 2017, when her daughter was only three months old.
Behind bars, she had to deal with an aggressive warden who called her a “terrorist” even though she had not been convicted of any crime at the time.
In January 2019 her daughter Bahar, then 15 months old, dislocated her wrist while playing with a friend in the ward. Hendekci recalled that prison officials were visibly indifferent to the child’s agony and that it took a great deal of insistence from inmates and paramedics to convince them to allow Bahar’s hospitalization.
Hendekci also talked about overcrowding, another problem in Turkey’s prisons. She recalled that more than 25 inmates were held in a ward designed for 12.
According to reports by Council of Europe bodies, Turkey has some of the most overcrowded prison facilities in Europe, and access to healthcare is not only inadequate but also frequently subject to substantial delays.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the 2013 corruption investigations, 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 the abortive putsch in 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
