S.Ö., whose husband was jailed a few weeks before she gave birth to a baby, was detained in Sakarya on March 8 when she went to Sakarya Prison to show him their newborn baby.
According to AktifHaber.com, police detained S.Ö. on March 8 while women around the world were marking International Women’s Day and put her in Ferizli Prison in Sakarya.
S.Ö.’s husband was imprisoned 45 days ago over links to a failed coup in Turkey in July of last year. She gave birth to a baby 17 days later.
Turkey experienced a military coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others. Immediately after the putsch, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pinned the blame on the Gülen movement despite the lack of any evidence to that effect.
Although the Gülen movement strongly denies having any role in the putsch, the government accuses it of having masterminded the foiled coup. US-based Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen whose views inspired the Gülen movement called for an international investigation into the coup attempt, 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.
In the currently ongoing post-coup purge, over 135,000 people, including thousands within the military, have been purged due to their real or alleged connection to the Gülen movement, according to a statement by the labor minister on Jan. 10.
As of March 1, 93,248 people were being held without charge, with an additional 46,274 in pre-trial detention. A total of 7,316 academics were dismissed, and 4,070 judges and prosecutors were purged over alleged coup involvement or terrorist links.
