Derya Erkan, a physics teacher in the Black Sea province of Samsun, was detained on Monday for alleged membership in the Gülen movement and had to leave her infant son with a neighbor to be cared for, the aktifhaber news website has reported.
According to a Twitter account named mağduriyetler, which reports about the ongoing rights violations in Turkey that escalated in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the baby, Semih, is being breast fed.
Erkan is one of the dozens of mothers who have been separated from their children due to a government-led crackdown on the Gülen movement, which is accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
More than 17,000 women in Turkey, many with small children, have been jailed in the 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 report titled “Jailing Women In Turkey: Systematic “Campaign of Persecution and Fear” released last April by the Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) revealed.