Advocates demand release of sick child detained in Diyarbakir

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Advocates are calling on Turkish officials to release a sick child from a Diyarbakir prison after his mother, a Kurdish politician, was arrested on suspicion of fostering links to terrorism.

Gonul Aslan, a member of the municipal council for Diyarbakir’s Baglar district, was arrested alongside 12 other suspects in raids conducted Friday by Turkish counter-terror police. Aslan’s son, Dilges, has a kidney condition and needs medical care, said Berdan Acun, a lawyer representing Aslan.

Turkish law allows parents to request their young children be housed with them in prison. During arraignment, Aslan requested her son be hospitalized to undergo kidney treatment, but because the child’s father is outside the country and no other guardian could be found, the mother had no option but to take her child with her to prison.

“All Dilges wants is to go home with his mother,” the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey said in a statement Monday.

“A child of the age of three years was admitted to custody at the request of the parent who was arrested for membership of a terror group,” a spokesperson for the Diyarbakir Public Prosecutor confirmed to Rudaw English via telephone.

Aslan is an employee of Rosa Women’s Association (RKD), a civil society group that advocates for women’s rights and publishes research on domestic violence. She is also a member of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which has seen hundreds of its members jailed for alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 

“This specific operation mainly targeted female Kurdish politicians and activists,” the HDP said in a statement on Monday. “The police also raided the office of the RKD and confiscated their official documents.” 

Aslan’s lawyer said his client was performing legitimate political activities and the arrests have no legal basis.  

Turkey is one of around 100 countries that have laws allowing those arrested or incarcerated to request their children be housed with them in prison.

“Any time a parent is arrested, the biggest problem that arises is what will become of [their] children,” said Emin Coban, head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association Children’s Commission, in a statement emailed to Rudaw English. 

As a signatory of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, Tukey should “take into account the child’s best interest in all legal and administrative regulations,” he added

Some 3,100 minors were convicted or detained in 2019, according to a report by the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.

Article 65 of Law no. 5275 on the Execution of Criminal and Security Measures allows for children to be housed with their families in separate facilities away from the general prison population, and provides for special food, education, and sleeping arrangements for children who are incarcerated with their parents.

The Foundation’s report also analyzed data published by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) and estimated that Turkey’s prisons are overcapacity by about 74,000 people. “This, in turn, brings along deterioration of material conditions in prisons and a significant increase in cases of deprivation of rights,” the report said.

However, because of the young child’s kidney problems, advocates say prison conditions pose a risk. “Given the conditions and poor hygiene in the prison, it is clear that the pandemic poses a life risk for my client and her sick child,” Acun told Rudaw English.

Reached by telephone, Mehmet Emin Yaz, a spokesperson for the Diyarbakir Public Prosecutor told Rudaw English the arrests were made in connection with a plot to plant explosives during Eid celebrations marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

A police counter-terrorism unit claims a cache of explosives was discovered in a Diyarbakir cemetery and released video showing investigators unearthing what appear to be explosive devices buried under stones.

However, the HDP contends the raids are part of a greater political campaign against them.

The HDP is accused by Ankara of being the political wing of the PKK – an armed group which has fought a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state for greater cultural and political rights for Kurds.

HDP officials deny the party fosters and “organic links” to the PKK, but has rejected its proscription by the US and EU, and has expressed respect for the ideology of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. 

According to data collected by the HDP, just 14 of the 65 HDP-affiliated mayors who were elected in local elections in March 2019 remain in office. The rest have been arrested or removed from office.