Turkish police are waiting at Adana Avrupa Hospital to detain Elif Açıkgöz, who just gave birth by cesarean section, over alleged links to the Gülen movement, which is accused by the Turkish government of mounting a botched coup attempt last summer, Samanyolu haber reported on Monday.
After they were told that Açıkgöz could not be discharged from the hospital, police started a vigil in front of her room.According to the report, Açıkgöz’s husband is also jailed.Havva Hamamcıoğlu, Nazlı Mert, Esra Demir, Aysun Aydemir, Elif Aslaner and Fadime Günay are only some of the women who also faced detention shortly after delivery as part of a post-coup witch-hunt targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement.
More than 17,000 women in Turkey, many with small children, have been jailed in an unprecedented crackdown and subjected to torture and ill-treatment in detention centers and prisons as part of the government’s systematic campaign of intimidation and persecution of critics and opponents, a new report titled “Jailing Women In Turkey: Systematic Campaign of Persecution and Fear” released in April by SCF has revealed.
The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 killed 249 people. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement.
Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, but President Erdoğan — calling the coup attempt “a gift from God” — and the government initiated a widespread purge aimed at cleansing sympathizers of the movement from within state institutions, dehumanizing its popular figures and putting them in custody.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced on July 13 that 50,510 people have been arrested and 169,013 have been the subject of legal proceedings on coup charges since the failed coup.
