A former teacher previously sentenced to six years, 10 months for her alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement has been arrested and sent by a court to prison accompanied by her 9-month-old son, the Bold Medya news website reported.
Büşra Tuna Çankaya, her child and her husband Yasin Çankaya were on their way to Greece to seek asylum in Europe when they were detained by Turkish police.
She was accused of depositing money in Bank Asya, a now-closed financial institution linked to the Gülen movement, attending religious sermons organized by the movement and for using ByLock, an encrypted messaging application that was widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Çankaya’s sentence has not yet been reviewed by the Supreme Court of Appeals; however, fearing that her conviction would be upheld, she reportedly attempted to cross into Greece through the border city of Edirne, where she was taken into custody by the police. Due to the circumstances of her arrest, Çankaya will await the final adjudication of her appeal in prison with her young son.
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 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 targeting its members. 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.
ByLock, once widely available online, has been considered a secret tool of communication among supporters of the movement since the coup attempt, despite the lack of any evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
A family member described Çankaya’s distress prior to the arrest. “Büşra cried a lot, saying, ‘I don’t want to leave my country, but they’re forcing me to. I don’t want my child to grow up in prison’,” the relative said. “She begged people not to forget them if something happened.”
Yasin Çankaya had previously served two years in prison on similar charges before being acquitted. However, new witnesses were added to his case, and fresh charges were filed. His case is currently under review by Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals.
He had been working as a police officer before being dismissed under a government decree following the 2016 coup attempt.
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.
Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a prominent human rights advocate and an opposition lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), tweeted a photo of Çankaya and her child, expressing disapproval of the arrest.
“Turkey is the country where you are imprisoned while trying to leave the country with your baby to escape the lawlessness!” he said.
According to Law No. 5275, pregnant women and mothers with babies younger than 18 months should be released pending trial.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
