Police raided Makbule Ozer’s house in Van province in 2018 after she treated a woman for an umbilical hernia. The authorities said the visiting woman was a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and accused her and her husband of aiding the Kurdish group.
Ozer and her 69-year-old husband, Hadi Ozer, were sentenced to two years and one month later in the same year. They were arrested in May 2022. The elderly woman was released four months later due to her ill health but was taken back to prison in April this year despite her age and disability.
Authorities released her husband in January 2023, but kept her incarcerated until Saturday when she completed her full sentence, Serhat Ozer, their son told Rudaw English.
“They [authorities] brought me out early in the morning… They did not let people welcome me because they were terrified. Good that they are afraid of us,” she said in a video message sent to Rudaw English.
Ozer’s imprisonment had drawn the ire of many due to her age and poor health conditions.
This is not the first time that Kurdish elders with disabilities and chronic diseases have been incarcerated in Turkey for alleged links to the PKK. Ali Bocnak died from an illness at the age of 76 in September 2020 after spending more than a decade in jail for alleged links to the PKK. In 2018, a court in Mus province rejected an appeal to release the 78-year-old Sise Bingol from jail despite suffering from diabetic, high blood pressure, lung and kidney problems.
