Within the State of Emergency in Turkey, 668 Babies are in Prison

Since April 2017 number of the children in prison (the word ‘baby’ is not in use in the literature so for children in ages 0-6 in prison are called ‘children’) increased from 560 to 700 just in four months.

Women who newly gave birth and about to give birth are specially arrested by officials. During baby birth, police wait in front of the door and arrest the women after a short while from the birth. Puerpera women are imprisoned with their babies.

This issue came to the fore by hashtag #668BabiesBehindBars with congresswoman of Party of Republican People, Gamze AKKUS’s statistics.

Besides, a petition on change.org with hashtag is started. The aim was to reach Ministry of Justice. Ahile reaching tens of thousands, Ministry of Justice of Turkey didn’t even put in the agenda. Almost everyday, a puerpera woman is taken to prison from hospital. On top of everything, AKP jurisdiction obviously targets pregnant women to imprison in last four months. The government prefers to deny all of these.

On August, Grand National Assembly of Turkey’s Justice Commission Member and congressman of AKP in Bartın Yılmaz TUNC answered the questions from BBC Türkçe . He said that the news about imprisoned women with babies were wrong and there was no application to the Justice Commission about the issue and continued his words:

‘’The perception tried to create in care of international law indicates that there is a persecution on imprisoned women in Turkey. All are nothing but agitations of the arrested people’s situations against Turkey and just a dark propaganda. ‘’

Babies’ situations in prisons are heartrending. As a result of emergency state law, beds for babies are not available. Diapers and wipes are not been giving on the time. There is no supplementary food, milk is almost impossible to get. They have no toys to play, in many cities toys are not given to children. Not only toys, one the families whose relative had been arrested wished to send a pacifier for the baby with shipment. But it wasn’t given by the officials.

Babies live in the cells with overall capacity. So even the area they can crawl is not enough. Hundreds of babies are in unhealthy situations, terrified by other prisoners. Most of them can’t talk. If they are sick they are not getting the cure. They are not taken to the hospital on time. Even if they are taken, they are not with their mothers. Babies themselves are trying to survive with their small bodies.

What Do Law Say About Child Arrest?

The applicable law of Criminal Execution no.5275 says ‘’Prison sentence is put back for the women who are pregnant or six months or less puerpera.’’

Besides this, the United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child and many other international conventions and Constitution of Turkey’s 41^st clause are violated. The 41^st clause of Constitution of Turkey says ‘’Every child has the right of being protected, cared and making bound with parents and keep in touch with them for long unless if it causes high benefit to the parents. Government takes protection for every kind of abuse and violent.’’

Furthermore, mothers of the 700 babies in prison have no crime, no obvious crime, most of them even don’t have an indictment. It’s nothing less than mercilessness to put women in prisons with their babies without crime, even indictment. Turkey’s current directors are darkening the futures of their country’s future.

Waiting for a solution from the officials would be just an endless optimism. Within the TUIK statistics, the numbers of the pregnant women and the women lost their babies as a matter of prison situations have to be published but TUIK’s attitude shows us there is a neglect of duty. Hiding this information from public and sweep it under the mat is nothing but constituting a crime. Rules of law are ignored. The government doesn’t apply the rules of law, moreover, it changes the current laws for its benefit with the name of ‘state of emergency’.

What to Do?

Nowadays there are too much Turkish citizens living abroad. The first thing to do is to inform the United Nations representative about the situation. Legislation officers are the ones who disobey.  This victimization must be acquainted with concrete evidences, specially by the media.

Building a platform and moving together would be a better way to have a quick result.

Having the target of reaching the same place, when reacting, would make it more memorable for worldwide public. As long as we don’t stand back looking for solutions for our rights and freedom.

Last words; mothers who have babies between 0-6 ages must be have trials without arrestment.