A well-known saying of the Prophet Mohammed intones, “Allah has no mercy for him who has no mercy for his fellows.” It appears to be lost on Turkey’s Islamist Justice and Development Party government. The case of Ayse Ozdogan, an end-stage cancer patient, who is serving a nine-year sentence over her links to an anti-government religious sect, is among the starkest examples. Turkey’s Human Rights Association reckons there are over 1,600 seriously ill inmates in Turkey’s notoriously brutal and overpopulated prison system. About 600 are said to be in critical condition. The government won’t free them.

Ozdogan is suffering from a rare form of cancer called maxillary sinus. A portion of her face was removed in a complex operation on Jan. 2, 2020. A steady trickle of blood oozes from her nose and palate. She can barely speak, according to Ozdogan’s lawyer, Tarik Avsar. “Now Ayse Ozdogan is stuck in a cell even an animal wouldn’t live in, over nonsense charges,” Avsar told Al-Monitor.

“My sister wants to die in dignity. Her health is going from bad to worse. She must be freed,” Ozdogan’s elder sister, Emine Erdem, told Al-Monitor. A government run hospital in Antalya drew the same conclusion in a July 9 report seen by Al-Monitor. A panel of seven doctors unanimously agreed that the patient’s life was under threat and that her sentence should therefore be commuted to allow for treatment. But their verdict was overturned by the state-run Istanbul forensics institute, which opined that Ozdogan’s treatment could continue in jail.  Her appeals for mercy, aired via a heart-wrenching video, fell upon deaf ears. On Oct. 2 Ozdogan was carted off to the Antalya “T type” prison where her husband Ilker, is serving out his sentence on charges of membership of the "Fethullah Terrorist Organization."