One of the brothers of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, Kutbettin Gülen, who was arrested in October, is being deprived of his prescribed medication despite suffering from heart disease and high blood pressure, the tr724 news website reported on Saturday.
According to the report, 70-year-old Kutbettin Gülen, who was working for a printing house in İzmir, has been held in solitary confinement cell since Oct. 2.
Gülen, who has also a herniated disk, was not given permission to see his family for months until his daughter was recently allowed to visit.
His daughter didn’t recognize her father, who has lost much weight and could walk only with the support of two guards.
Gülen’s lawyer told tr724 that instead of the medications he is supposed to take, he might have been given much stronger drugs.
His family is worried they might lose him if these conditions in prison persist.
Gülen is accused of being part of a faith-based movement that is claimed by the government along with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to have masterminded a failed coup attempt on July 15 that killed over 240 people and wounded more than a thousand others.
Fethullah Gülen, who inspired the movement, strongly denied having any role in the failed coup and called for an international investigation into it, 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.
According to a report by the state-run Anadolu news agency on May 28, 154,694 individuals have been detained and 50,136 have been jailed due to alleged Gülen links since the failed coup attempt.