Kurdish prisoner sent to hospital 20 days after heart attack

Muhlise Karagüzel, an incarcerated official of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was denied immediate medical treatment after being examined by the prison’s physician, who reportedly suspected a heart attack.

Speaking to Jin News, daughter Zilan Karagüzel said that the physician in the prison’s infirmary stated that she should be taken to the hospital and her veins widened through a medical operation, which suggested that she’d been probably suffering a heart attack.

Kept waiting for 20 days

Zilan Karagüzel said:

“My mother was then brought back to her ward and she started preparing, assuming that they’d take her to hospital. However the prison administration kept her waiting for 20 days. At last, yesterday morning, she collapsed in the ward and they took her to the hospital. She immediately had an angioplasty and a stent was placed in her vein.”

Zilan Karagüzel was allowed only 20 minutes to visit and see her mother at the hospital. She informed that her mother was handcuffed to the hospital bed although she had a serious condition and many state troops were present during her visit.

She added that her mother was told she would be discharged from the hospital, although she did not yet recover.

Muhlise Karagüzel, the co-chair of the HDP branch in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority province of Muş, had been sentenced to eight years and 10 months in prison.

Death behind bars

Last month, a 39-year-old political prisoner died in a Turkish prison because of a condition in his lungs.

Turgay Deniz’s lungs had been failing due to tuberculosis, and he had been using an oxygen pump for the last 12 years. He’d been jailed a year ago, in February 2021.

Despite a medical report stating that he was not fit for incarceration due to his medical condition, he was incarcerated, and his condition was further aggravated because of three subsequent transfers to other prisons.

A month before his death, when he had a very bad episode, Deniz was taken to a hospital without his family’s knowledge but was sent back to prison after the doctors said there was no hope for his recovery.

It’s been recently reported that there are at least 1,600 prisoners behind bars in Turkey with various health conditions and that at least 600 have serious conditions.