Second wedding at Silivri Prison: Dilek İmamoğlu's request to be a witness denied

Following the wedding of the imprisoned head of the Istanbul Planning Agency, Buğra Gökce, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Deputy Secretary General Gürkan Akgün is also getting married at Silivri Prison, where he is being held. CHP Chairman Özgür Özel and Tahsin Ocaklı will serve as witnesses at the wedding ceremony.

Dilek İmamoğlu's request to serve as a witness was not accepted.

In a statement made while wearing her wedding dress and holding her bouquet, Sinem Keleş said, "Today, we are not just performing a marriage ceremony; we are showing that the walls and barbed wire of Silivri cannot defeat hope, love, and affection. In a period marked by unlawful acts and human rights violations, we will not get used to injustice. Together with our families, we are standing tall," she said.

GÜRKAN AKGÜN'S MESSAGE

Akgün had previously stated, "We are getting married! We cannot invite you to our wedding ceremony, as the conditions are well-known. But meeting, hugging, rejoicing, and having fun outside is free. Actually, if all these things that happened to us hadn't occurred, we had decided to hold our wedding on July 26, exactly today, and we were just about to inform you that... That's life! Sometimes the plans made do not come to fruition."

Akgün had noted the following:

We thought and deliberated. We said, "Let's continue from where we left off!" After all, life flows, and love does not wait. If we are still alive; and if we love each other; purely, unconditionally, boundlessly - which we do - neither walls, nor iron doors, nor blind windows can stop us..

On Wednesday, July 30, around noon, provided that our permit applications are approved, we will hold our wedding ceremony in Silivri with the participation of our families, with our Republican People's Party Chairman Mr. Özgür Özel and Ms. Dilek Kaya İmamoğlu as witnesses, and officiated by our Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Deputy Mayor Mr. Nuri Aslan.

Our hope has never faded, and it will not. We will meet in free days where we will dance the horon and halay together, and sing songs at the top of our lungs; we will hold many more weddings and celebrations. For now, this is how it is...