‘I have been left to die’ says cancer patient Pehlivan at Silivri Prison

An inmate of Silivri Prison No 9 who suffers from cancer, Mesude Pehlivan (52), has said that she has been held for months in a single-person cell, is being denied chemotherapy treatment and her health is gradually deteriorating. Pehlivan said in a letter she sent from the jail to our paper, “I have been abandoned to gradual death, like Güler Zere. After my illness has progressed a little further, I will be taken to hospital for treatment but by then my illness will not respond to treatment.” The Association of Families of Convicts and Detainees (TAYAD) has started a petition at Change.org calling for the release of Pehlivan, who was sent to Silivri on 1 August.

Pehlivan, who was a nurse when she was detained, states that she contracted stomach cancer in prison and this spread throughout her body in a short time. Pehlivan, noting that before being sent from Bakırköy Prison, examinations had been made in preparation for an operation initially on a tumour in her thyriod and she was receiving chemotherapy on the fifteenth of each month, states that she has had no chemotherapy since being brought to Silivri. Pehlivan, saying that she has been kept in the cell for nearly two months, wrote: “I am a patient of the Istanbul Training and Research Hospital. Following my arrival here, I have not been taken to hospital even once. My illness has reached an advanced stage. The second stage of chemotherapy was to be embarked on. I have been pushing to go to hospital since the day I arrived at Silivri. I have written countless petitions to this end to both the prison management and the sick-bay doctor. I have informed them of my situation and request orally. But, I have received no reply. My illness advances every day. I keep on hearing that my health file has gone to the prison complex hospital and my file will be presented to the committee there. My file has not been examined for weeks. The example of Güler Zere is still in our memories. When I am transferred to hospital, I will have been brought to death’s door. This is an entirely deliberate policy.” Pehlivan, who states that she worked as a nurse at Çapa Hospital for years, said, “I am very familiar with the time it takes for a patient’s file to be examined in the committee and the admission into hospital stage. The administration’s statements do not appear plausible to me. I wish to make my voice heard on the outside before death knocks at my door, and that of all sick detainees like me.”

Caused by chemicals

It is claimed in the text accompanying the petition started at Change.org that Pehlivan contracted cancer as a result of chemical gases used during the ‘Return to Life’ operation in 2000. With it noted that Pehlivan underwent cancer treatment for two years, it is said, “Pehlivan is a cancer patient who runs the risk of heart attack. For her to be kept in solitary confinement amounts to torture by itself.”