“Abdullah Tırpan was brought to his visit at Metris Prison in a wheelchair. He cannot stand. The gangrene in his left leg is well advanced, three areas are bandaged, and he has two open wounds larger than ten centimetres. He has been told the leg may have to be amputated.”

The account is that of Mustafa Yeneroğlu, an independent member of parliament for İstanbul, who visited him on 8 October and writes that he is not a doctor.

The Forensic Medicine Institute concluded in December 2025 that there was no medical objection to his remaining in prison. The Tekirdağ City Hospital health board reached the same conclusion in May 2026 and again in June. He was examined once more two days before the visit, with the same result. One of the reports states that he is able to meet his daily needs without assistance.

Tırpan is 73. He worked as a butcher in Tekirdağ for 55 years, in a shop called Tırpan Et, in some years among his district’s highest taxpayers. He has five children and no previous convictions.

On 8 August 2019 the Tekirdağ 3rd Assize Court sentenced him to seven years and six months for membership of an armed terrorist organisation. The Court of Cassation upheld the sentence unanimously on 7 March 2022.

The grounds are set out in the judgment. He held shares in the company that ran a school licensed by the Ministry of National Education, and transferred a building he owned to that company for use as a dormitory. He attended religious conversation meetings. He made donations. He subscribed to the Zaman newspaper. One magazine, two newspaper clippings and a book were found at his home, and ten magazines at his workplace. He sent his children and grandchildren to a licensed private school. He opened an account at a bank licensed by the banking regulator.

There is no ByLock allegation. In the judgment’s own words, the examination of his digital material found no data assessed as possibly constituting an offence.

Yeneroğlu sets out what the file contains and what it does not. Every witness account relates to the period before December 2013. The judgment records the date of the offence as the day Tırpan was taken into custody — there is no single dated act. The allegation that he was a trustee rests on a secret witness never heard at the hearing. Another witness corrected his police statement in open court, saying that Tırpan was by then old and ill, did not attend meetings and had given him no assistance; the court relied on the police statement rather than the corrected one. The assessment section of the judgment records that no suspicious movement was found in his Bank Asya account; thirty lines later, the operative section lists opening that account and paying money into it among the reasons for conviction. The sentence was set above the statutory minimum on the ground of the intensity of his criminal intent.

Tırpan does not deny that he was part of the community in those years. Of those who did the same things in the same district and now sit in parliament or hold office, he told Yeneroğlu: “I find no fault with them, I pass no judgement.”

Under Article 16 of Law No. 5275, execution of a sentence may be suspended on health grounds where there is no serious and concrete danger to public safety. Tırpan was released before his conviction became final and lived outside for years.

Nine days ago the same institute found İbrahim Halil Al, held at Edirne with soft tissue cancer, fit to remain in prison.

The question Yeneroğlu puts is whether anything now keeps this man in prison other than the fact that he is in it.