A Turkish court on Tuesday released Yusuf Özmen, a stage 4 cancer patient who spent over four years behind bars despite repeated calls for his release due to his deteriorating health.
According to the TR724 news website, Özmen, 49, was freed under parole regulations, after serving part of an eight-year, nine-month sentence he was given for alleged ties to the faith-based Gülen movement. He was serving prison time despite being diagnosed with stage 3 testicular cancer, which later metastasized to his lungs.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah 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 in 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity.
Özmen was first arrested in 2018 on charges of links to the Gülen movement and spent 18 months in pretrial detention. During this time, he underwent major surgery but was returned to prison just six days later. He was released pending trial in 2019, but in March 2021, the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld his conviction, and he was rearrested.
He was accused of using the ByLock smartphone application and sentenced to almost nine years in prison. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeals, and he is currently in a prison in eastern Erzurum province.
Turkey has considered ByLock, once widely available online, a secret tool of communication among supporters of the Gülen movement since the coup attempt in July 2016 despite the lack of any evidence that ByLock messages were related to the failed coup, leading to the arrest of thousands who were using it.
Özmen’s health has deteriorated throughout his imprisonment. In August 2021 he was rushed to the emergency ward with a heart rate of 200 beats per minute, and doctors recommended an angiography. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, he was put in solitary quarantine upon his return to prison.
Despite a medical report signed by 40 doctors in 2021 stating he was unfit for incarceration, in 2022 the Turkish Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) for the third time issued a report saying Özmen was healthy enough to remain in prison. This also contradicted a report by Erzurum Atatürk University Research Hospital, which had deemed him unfit for incarceration and issued a report indicating he was almost totally disabled.
The ATK frequently comes under criticism over its questionable reports that find ailing inmates fit to remain in prison. Rights advocates slam the agency over its lack of independence from political influence and its role in compounding the persecution of political prisoners.
In 2022 his wife, Aynur Özmen, publicly shared his hospital records, which showed a tumor in his lung had grown. “Hospital reports say my husband’s incarceration should be postponed,” she said. “What are authorities waiting for? He is being condemned to death.”
Human rights activists and opposition politicians have frequently criticized the authorities for not releasing critically ill prisoners so they can seek proper treatment. Human rights defender and Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu previously said ill prisoners were not released until they were at the point of no return.
Every year, rights groups report the death of dozens of sick prisoners, either while behind bars or shortly after their belated release, which often comes at the end-stage of their illnesses.
