Turkish prison authorities have delayed the parole of Figen Çapkur, a social studies teacher convicted of alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, despite her eligibility for release, the TR724 news website reported on Tuesday.
Çapkur, 51, was set to be released after serving three years, four months of a more than six-year sentence. However, her family says prison officials first delayed her parole after a Prison Administration and Observation Board in Diyarbakır claimed she had failed to provide a satisfactory answer during a parole interview. The details of the interview were not made public, but as a result her release was postponed by three months.
At the end of the three months, authorities said the parole board had approved her release, and she was transferred to a minimum-security prison, where she was expected to soon be freed.
However, in a sudden reversal, her family learned that a prosecutor had intervened, ordering that she remain in prison for another four months instead of being released. The initial interview with the prison board was given as the reason for the prolongation of her incarceration.
Her son, Taha Eren Çapkur, condemned the decision on social media, accusing the authorities of playing with his mother’s emotions and deliberately extending her imprisonment.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as members of his family 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 pursuing its followers. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following an abortive putsch in 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Çapkur was sentenced to six years, three months in prison for alleged ties to the Gülen movement. Her conviction was based on activities such as depositing money in Bank Asya, subscribing to certain newspapers and attending religious gatherings — actions the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled do not constitute a crime.
Her husband, history teacher Tahir Çapkur, was also arrested in 2016 on similar charges. He served six years in prison before his release in 2022.
The Turkish government accepted such daily activities as having an account at or depositing money in a Gülen movement affiliated bank, working at any institutions linked to the movement or subscribing to certain newspapers and magazines as benchmarks for identifying and arresting tens of thousands alleged members of the movement on charges of membership in a terrorist organization.
Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. More than 130,000 public servants as well as 24,706 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.
