Feyza Yazıcı, who gave birth to a premature baby on Friday and was detained by police on Sunday as part of the Turkish government’s witch-hunt against the Gülen movement, was released by a prosecutor later in the day, news website TR724 reported.
According to the report, due to her lawyer’s efforts, police who had been waiting at the at the door of the delivery room of Memorial Hospital in Ankara agreed to wait another night before detaining Yaylacı. She was released by a prosecutor after being taken to court by police later in the day.
Reacting to the detention of women soon after giving birth, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu called on the government to stop the oppression, in a Twitter message on Saturday.
This is not the first time Turkish police have waited outside a hospital room to detain a woman who just had a baby, as part of a government witch-hunt against followers of the Gülen movement.
In July, Rümeysa Doğan in an Antalya hospital and Ayşe Kaya from Edirne were detained by police after delivery.
On June 2, Elif Aslaner, a religious education teacher who gave birth to a baby May 31 at a private hospital in Bursa, was detained due to alleged links to the Gülen movement, which Turkish government accuse of masterminding a failed coup last summer.
In May, Aysun Aydemir, an English teacher who gave birth to a baby in an elective cesarean procedure, was detained at the hospital and subsequently arrested by a court and put in pretrial detention with a 3-day-old baby in Zonguldak province as part of the witch-hunt targeting the Gülen movement.
In late January, Fadime Günay, who gave birth to a baby, was detained by police at Antalya’s Alanya Başkent Hospital for alleged links to the Gülen movement.
In early January, Ş.A., a former private school teacher and mother of a week-old premature infant, was taken into police custody over links to the movement while she was on her way to the hospital to feed the baby.