A Turkish woman previously sentenced to over six years for her alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement has been arrested by a court and sent to prison despite being 9 months pregnant, the TR724 news website reported on Saturday.
Merve Zayım was taken into custody by police on July 3 while trying to cross into Greece to seek asylum. She is currently being held in Edirne L-Type Prison, despite being in the final stage of her pregnancy. The arrest comes after the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned her original verdict in late June, ordering a retrial.
Fearing a fresh conviction, Zayım was trying to leave Turkey.
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 some of his family members 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.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
Zayım, who is 38 weeks pregnant, has been experiencing contractions in prison and fears she may have to give birth behind bars.
“My wife should be granted a release from prison,” her husband, Furkan Zayım, told TR724. “She is legally entitled to this, yet they arrested her regardless. All conditions for her to be tried without being in detention are in place.”
Under Law No. 5275, children up to age six stay with incarcerated mothers when no other caregiver is available, but the same legislation lets courts postpone a woman’s sentence if she has given birth within the previous 18 months. Rights groups say such postponements are rarely granted.
Furkan Zayım said his wife is being held in a cell with 25 other inmates and only has access to water for two hours a day. “It’s already hot. She’s in pain, and the other inmates are scared,” he said. “We don’t want our baby to be born in prison. She must be released immediately.”
Merve Zayım was convicted based on her employment at Samanyolu Gülbahar College in Eskişehir, a school shuttered by the government for its alleged links to the Gülen movement, as well as for the alleged use of ByLock, an encrypted messaging app that was available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Although the European Court of Human Rights has in many cases made clear that use of the ByLock messaging app does not constitute a criminal offense, detentions and arrests of individuals continue in Turkey for their alleged use of the ByLock application.
Since the coup attempt, the Turkish government has accepted such activities as having an account at Bank Asya, one of Turkey’s largest commercial banks at the time; using the ByLock messaging application; and subscribing to the 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.
Her husband, who taught mathematics at another now-closed Gülen-affiliated school, served 69 months of a seven-and-a-half-year sentence before his release in January 2024. He said the family has been under pressure for years.
“We want to leave, but we can’t. There’s no justice here. What would you do in our place?” he asked.
Merve Zayım‘s continued imprisonment drew criticism from Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a prominent human rights defender and lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party). He said Zayım is likely to give birth in prison.
“Merve Zayım is now one of those entering prison with a baby in her belly. Most likely, she’ll give birth behind bars,” Gergerlioğlu said on X. “This is the latest act of a government that imprisons even babies.”
