[3] Similarly, the academic Nuriye Gülmen, who was dismissed as a result of the Decree Law, started a protest in front of the Human Rights Monument on Yüksel Street in Ankara to take her job back and Özakça joined her on 23 November 2016.

[7] On 22 June 2017, Semih Özakça and Nuriye Gülmen applied to the Constitutional Court of Turkey with the request for lifting their detention, as they had started to suffer from health issues due to the hunger strike.

In its response, the Court stated that "there was no situation requiring an immediate injunction to terminate the applicants' detention as there was not any threat available to pose a danger to their lives, their material or moral integrity".

The ECHR ruled in its rejection that "in the light of the medical reports and other information submitted to the court, the fact that Özakça and Gülmen were detained at the Sincan State Hospital did not constitute a real and immediate danger to the applicants' life."

[15] On top of that, the Ministry of Interior Research and Studies Center published a 54-page booklet titled "The Unending Scenario of a Terrorist Organization, Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça Truth".