When the soldiers pointed their guns at us, the child in my arms was so scared and cried so much that I can still hear his voice in my ears

Hello, I decided to write about my life in 2016 and after, which I went through like other victims, along with the different difficulties we all experienced during this process, and which I wanted to put into writing. I started my life with different changes in 2017 and then entered a period in which difficult days began for me in 2018. 2018 was a very difficult year for me. I was engaged at that time and my fiancé and I were going to set a date for the wedding. We had started the necessary preparations for this.

On February 20, 2018, the police came to our homes to detain us. He narrowly escaped capture but I was caught. The real troubles and difficult process started for me at that time. The difficulties I experienced in detention, the pressures put on me, threats against my family and fiancé, etc. I don't want to explain these in detail. Just like we all experience.

After my detention, I was arrested and sent to prison. I stayed in Adıyaman Prison for about 5 months. After that I was released, I met with my fiancé and we decided to go abroad. After completing the preparations with my fiancé, we set out. We were caught in Edirne in August 2018. I would like to briefly explain the incident of being caught in Edirne. We arrived in Edirne on Friday. We would meet with the some people there, who would take us to the border. But they said there was a problem through crossing the border so that night we stayed there for one night. The next day, around 9 pm, after being taken somewhere by the people we met, we started walking the rest ourselves. It was dark. A few people in front of us were guiding us. After walking and sometimes running for hours, we saw the soldiers walking around and because of it we hid in the corn field. It was a swamp, we had difficulty moving forward, we waited in the middle of the corn field for more than one hour. Then we got out of there and started running towards the border. When we came to the border, there was fence there. The fence was approximately 4-5 meters hight. We were 7 people, include a family. They had a child who was 5 years old. We helped each other climb the fence, it was not possible to climb alone because it was so high. First, among the group, 3 men climbed the fence and crossed the border. Afterwards, the child's mother crossed over. Afterwards, I climbed up and asked for the child, and while I was pulling the child up, his T-shirt got stuck on the fence. When I rescued him and held him in my arms, I saw Turkish soldiers pointing their guns towards us. When the soldiers pointed their guns at us, the child in my arms was so scared and cried so much that I can still hear his voice in my ears. The soldiers persistently asked me for the child, saying, "Give us the child, give us the child." I was trying to persuade them by saying, "Stop, please lower your guns, the child is afraid and the child is not mine." His mother was on the Greek side and she was hiding.

Time stopped for me, I don't know how long I stayed there with that 5-year-old crying child and the guns pointed at us, maybe ten minutes, maybe more. Then his mother came out of hiding and I handed the child to his mother, and the two of them ran and hid in the bushes on the Greek side. And I continued to stay on the fence. At that time, some of the soldiers were looking for people hiding on the Turkish side. I was thinking like this: If they don't catch my fiancé, I will jump down to the Greek side and he will cross over after me. But when I saw that they had captured and brought my fiance, I also climbed down to the Turkish side. For me, my prison adventure started again. I was engaged and my fiance and I could not meet in any way. Not through phone calls or anything else. He was sent to Konya and I was sent to Çanakkale after staying in Edirne for a month.

After not being able to see each other for a long time, we decided to get married in prison because we would only have the opportunity to meet each other if we got married. That's why we wrote a petition to the necessary places. They brought my fiance from Konya to Canakkale and we were married there. One of my friends asked her husband, who was unarrested, for an engagement dress for me to wear at the wedding.

A historical wedding where guards were the wedding witnesses in the chief officers' room. My fiance asked the guards for permission to hug me after the wedding. After the marriage took place, he was taken to his prison cell and I was taken to mine.

My cellmates did henna for me. We used tomato paste as henna. After the wedding, when I was brought to the cell, my cellmates made confetti from newspaper pieces and threw them at me. We tried to do everything the way it was supposed to be, in the midst of deprivation and limitations.

Years over years, none of us thought that we would finish the execution of the prison sentences which was unfairly given to us. We had hope that the law would return to our country and we would be released from prison, but it did not happen. Nearly 5 years had passed in prison, and my prison mates and I had finished our sentences and we started to be released.

While I was thinking about what I could do and how I could adapt to life after I finished my sentence, I decided to take a course in the field of software. I saw that I adapted to life faster while taking the software course. It had been about 2 months since I was released from prison. A more difficult process was waiting for me. The February 6 earthquake that occurred in 2023. Who knew that underground is safer than above. And there began another process that was more difficult for me and turned my life upside down. Me and my family were in trouble. Our house was destroyed, my father was trapped under the rubble, and my mother miraculously survived. We cried for hours and asked for help. We called AFAD (State Disaster and Emergency Directorate) teams many times. They didn't come and didn't help in any way. We lifted the debris with our hands and looked for my father. When we found my father, he had already passed away. No help came for days. People died under the rubble from cold, thirst and hunger. Telling these made me relive those days again.

You know what's the saddest thing? You dream, you dream of the beautiful days you will spend with your loved ones, for years, inside the prison and they are waiting for you outside. Your father, mother, siblings and brother want to witness your happiness. They are eagerly waiting for you to come out. For nearly 5 years, my father couldn't come to visit me even once, because he said, "my daughter, my heart can't stand seeing you there." I said, "My dear dad, be healthy, I will come out and see you." Not being able to see him again in the world after so much longing and separation...But somehow we trust in Allah.We try to be patient, thinking that everything comes from God and that we are in a temporary world where God tests us and there is an afterlife.

And after all the events that happened, it was very difficult for me to breathe in that country. I came here, leaving my husband in prison and my sad family behind me. This is my story…