Help the Family of A Turkish Human Rights Victim

On the night of July 18, 2022, Turkish security forces surrounded the house of 39-year-old Gençay Baştimar in Ankara while he and his wife were in bed, and their two small daughters slept in the next room. Heavily armed police officers forced open their door and arrested Gençay in front of his terrified family, then transported him to the notoriously inhumane Sinçan Prison, where he has been held ever since.

Ironically, Gençay was once employed as a civil servant by the same government that arrested and imprisoned him, working as an electronic engineer at the Ministry of Energy. Since July 2016, when a failed coup d’état against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took place, the government of Turkey has engaged in a brutal, widespread crackdown against any perceived opposition, arresting over 80,000 people; as well as purging more than 130,000 government employees such as Gençay.

As in Gençay’s case, many caught up in the purge have been targeted on the thinnest possible evidence that they have ties to Fethullah Gulen, a former ally-turned-enemy of Erdogan, who now lives in exile in the United States. Erdogan accused Gulen and his followers of being behind the failed coup, branding them terrorists under the umbrella of the FETO group. This designation is not supported by the United States or the European Union, both of which have condemned the brutality of the Turkish government’s post-coup crackdown and its impact on human rights in the country.

The reason Gençay was fired from his job, arrested and imprisoned, terrorizing his family and robbing them of financial support? He is accused of downloading a popular Turkish smartphone encryption application called ByLock, the mere presence of which on a device was deemed proof of terrorism by the Turkish government and used to imprison thousands of innocent Turkish citizens such as Gençay. He is also accused of opening an account and depositing money in Bank Asya—a sizeable Islamic bank with many branches in Turkey, the leadership supposedly linked to Gulen—and subscribing to daily newspapers that criticize the Turkish government. Other than these absurd accusations, there is absolutely no evidence that Gençay has any ties to the Gulenist movement; or was involved in the failed coup. He is simply another innocent victim of Erdogan’s paranoia and brutality, along with thousands of other Turkish citizens unjustly jailed for similar reasons.

To recap: because Gençay downloaded a smartphone app, had a bank account, and read newspapers, he is now suffering in a Turkish prison, where he faces a potential six-year sentence for terrorism. Gençay’s health is ailing because he has no access to medical care, and his family faces starvation because they have lost their primary provider. His daughters, aged nine and four years old, will likely not be able to attend school without financial support. Please find it in your heart to donate whatever you can to support them as they fight to survive and take this grave miscarriage of justice in front of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.