Ayse Meles was diagnosed with cancer due to sadness and misery because one of her brothers was expelled from his job without questioning, while the other brother was sentenced to solitary confinement. Her older brother, Mehmet Meles, was a teacher in one of the schools affiliated with the Hizmet Movement, which the regime closed it by Decree-Law. The only crime Mehmet Meles `committed!` was to work in a school that the state permitted to open and inspected it every year, where ministers, MPs and senior bureaucrats were waiting in line in front of the school gate to admit their children to such schools.
Mehmet Meles had been arrested without question a year before the July 15 coup attempt. However, he was transferred from one prison to another instead of being sent to a prison in Izmir, where his family was. He was first imprisoned in Eskisehir, later moved to Ankara, and then to Corum prisons. Mehmet Meles was sentenced to 19 years and six months and kept in solitary confinement for the last two years.
Ayse Meles and Mehmet Meles’s mothers were 80 years old, had heart disease, and went to Izmir on every visit day. The distance from Izmir to Corum is 936 km, a 10-hour away. After every visit, she was hospitalised for 15 days after returning to Izmir because her old and sick body could not withstand the long journey.
Ayse Meles, who was both mother and father to her nephews and nieces, appealed to the Ministry of Justice a number of times for her brother’s transfer to Izmir. However, all her requests were rejected. Human Rights Defender, HDP Kocaeli Deputy Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, made her voice heard. The problems were not limited to this. The suffering Ayse Meles was fighting for her brother, who wanted to save him from the solitary confinement in the cell, was to get her brother to be taken to the regular ward. The pain she went through left deep scars on her, and she got cancer.
Mrs Meles confronted the challenges without making her brother feel it during her prison visits whilst receiving chemotherapy. She should not have been exhausted, but her heart could not cope with her brother’s imprisonment. On the other hand, she was the father and mother of her brother’s three children, meeting their needs. Ayse Meles had only one prayer: One day her brother would be found not guilty and that her brother would return home, taking care of his children himself. Even in her last moments, she did not let go of these prayers. When cancer progressed broadly, and she could not go to visit, she had only one wish and prayer, and that was to see his brother Mehmet Meles once more. But it couldn’t happen. Ayse Meles passed away on February 18, 2020, at Ege University Hospital. Mehmet Meles wanted to attend his sister’s funeral and applied to the Corum Prison administration, but his request was not accepted. Brother & sister, they left longing for each other.