Turkish authorities have arrested both parents of a 4-year-old child receiving treatment for tuberculosis, despite a hospital report stating that he needs maternal care, the TR724 news website reported.
Melek Tekin and her husband, Yusuf Tekin, were taken into custody in the northwestern province of Edirne on September 12 over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement. Their younger son, Selman, has been undergoing treatment for tuberculosis for the past three years and must visit a hospital several times a week.
Melek Tekin was handed down a prison sentence of more than six years, which is now before the Supreme Court of Appeals. The high court had previously overturned an earlier sentence of eight years, nine months on March 19, 2024. Tekin was first detained on December 10, 2016, in the aftermath of a coup attempt and suffered partial paralysis due to the pressure she was subjected to during five days in custody.
Her indictment includes charges of depositing money in the now-shuttered Bank Asya, using the ByLock messaging application, organizing social activities, serving as a member or executive of several associations and working at a student dormitory, all allegedly linked to the Gülen movement.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family 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 the 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.
Since the failed coup the Turkish government has accepted such activities as having an account at Bank Asya, which was closed down by the government in 2016; using the ByLock messaging application, an encrypted messaging app that was available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play; and subscribing to the now-shut-down Zaman daily or other publications affiliated with members of the movement as benchmarks for identifying and arresting alleged followers of the Gülen movement on charges of membership in a terrorist organization.
Yusuf Tekin was dismissed from his job as a primary school teacher in the southern province of Antalya under an emergency decree. He was arrested shortly after the coup attempt and remained in pretrial detention for two years before being released. His subsequent conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeals in September 2025, and the first hearing of his retrial is scheduled for December 18.
Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency (OHAL) that remained in effect until July 19, 2018. During this period, the government carried out a purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight by issuing a number of government decrees, known as KHKs. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as more than 24,000 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
A recent report by the Germany-based human rights group Crossborder Jurists documented how Turkey often incarcerates both parents simultaneously, particularly in cases linked to the Gülen movement, contrary to international practices that allow at least one parent to remain with the child.
The aftermath of Turkey’s post-coup purge has taken a considerable toll on children. The Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) previously documented these issues in its report, “The Forgotten Victims: Children of Turkey’s Post-Coup Purge,” which examines the persecution, social exclusion and psychological trauma endured by the children from families targeted in Turkey’s unprecedented post-coup purge.
