A 77-year-old woman jailed in Turkey for sending money to her imprisoned daughter and her cellmate has repeatedly been denied release despite suffering from dementia and serious mobility problems, the Mezopotamya news agency reported.
The Administration and Observation Board at Bakırköy Women’s Prison in İstanbul denied Hatice Yıldız’s release even though she received passing scores in a good conduct assessment. Turkey’s Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) also twice found her fit to remain in prison, while the Constitutional Court rejected her application alleging violations of her rights, her lawyer, Habat Demircan, said.
Yıldız was sentenced to more than four years in prison by the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court on charges of financing terrorism over the funds transfers. She was taken to prison on a stretcher in March 2024 after her conviction was upheld.
Demircan said Yıldız’s actions did not constitute financing terrorism because the money was sent through Turkey’s state-run postal service and could only be spent within limits set by prison authorities, making it impossible to use the funds to finance a terrorist organization.
Yıldız is scheduled for conditional release is May 2027, making her potentially eligible for supervised release a year earlier. In April the prison board found her unsuitable for release, citing her alleged failure to distance herself from a terrorist organization and a disciplinary penalty that Demircan said had never been communicated to her. The board is expected to review her eligibility again this month.
An application for Yıldız to serve the remainder of her sentence at home under provisions for elderly prisoners was also rejected because of her terrorism financing conviction, Demircan said. Her case has been pending before the European Court of Human Rights for about a year following the Constitutional Court’s rejection of her application.
Yıldız underwent eye surgery while incarcerated and frequently visits the prison infirmary. Demircan said she was unable to receive adequate medical care in prison.
Under Turkey’s Law on the Execution of Sentences and Security Measures, courts may suspend the sentence of a prisoner who cannot survive in prison due to a serious illness or disability and is not considered a serious or concrete danger to society. Rights groups say the provision is rarely applied in practice. Administration and Observation Boards, established in Turkish prisons in January 2021, have faced criticism from opposition parties and human rights groups for arbitrarily rejecting or delaying the conditional release or probation of political prisoners on grounds such as “failure to display remorse.” They have described the repeated rejections as politically motivated and a violation of prisoners’ rights, saying the boards exceed their authority and act like courts.
