Publications

Previous PageTable Of ContentsNext Page

THE GOVERNMENT'S REACTION

Government Attempts to Silence Prison and Human Rights Activists

The Turkish government has cracked down on those seeking to expose torture, beatings, and other police abuses related specifically to the December prison operations and to the conditions in F-type prisons more generally. The Families' Association for Solidarity with Prisoners (TAYAD) has been raided numerous times since October when the hunger strikes began and has been shut down on the orders of the Istanbul governor. Five branches of the Turkish Human Rights Association (HRA) have been closed since November because of their work on the F-type prisons. HRA branches have been repeatedly raided and members detained during this period. The Istanbul and Ankara branches of the HRA are currently facing prosecutions for their legitimate protests about isolation and the F-type prisons.

Nimet Tanrikulu, former president of the Istanbul branch of HRA, was formally arrested on January 6 for participating in a nonviolent demonstration against isolation in F-type prisons and released pending trial on February 6, 2001. HRA members have also been ill-treated: on January 6, Lutfi Demirkapi, president of the Ankara branch of the HRA, was detained while attempting to make a press statement next to the human rights monument in the city center. He told Human Rights Watch:

I was grabbed by police officers and put in a police van with relatives of prisoners held at Ankara's Sincan F-type prison. The police kicked and beat the others. We were all taken to Ankara Police Headquarters and made to stand for five hours leaning against a wall. There were two women over fifty years of age and they were treated just the same.62

HRA members are also being subjected to telephone threats. The Istanbul branch alone has received more than twenty such calls since the December operation. Lutfi Demirkapi of the Ankara branch told Human Rights Watch about a threatening phone call he received on January 5, when an unknown caller asked, "Are you still alive then?They are getting your shroud ready?"63 Such threats are taken seriously by the HRA, which has lost ten members in politically motivated armed attacks over the past decade.

Twenty-four people, including relatives of prisoners held in F-type prisons, seventeen of whom were remanded in custody, appeared in Ankara State Security Court on February 27 charged with membership or support of illegal armed organizations, because they had participated in demonstrations against F-type prisons. The prosecutor is demanding imprisonment for terms up to twenty-two years.

The intense pressure on the HRA is unrelenting. On March 18, 2001, sixty-seven members of the Istanbul branch of the HRA were detained when they attempted a sit-down protest against the F-type prisons in Sultanahmet park. As the branch president Eren Keskin was explaining to police officers that the protest would last no more than five minutes, she and the others were roughly detained. Afet Alaca,64 who was beaten with a truncheon and kicked, was examined and received a medical certificate upon release indicating that injuries to her back would render her unfit for work for forty-three days.

Government Attempts to Silence the Press

The Turkish authorities have openly tried to manipulate press coverage of the crisis. Media reports that were critical of the government's handling of the prison crisis have led to prosecutions, closure of media outlets, or the confiscation of offending editions. Four days before the December 19 operation, Istanbul State Security Court issued a judgment that any newspaper conveying any news that might be construed as supporting or encouraging the hunger-strikes would be prosecuted with risk of possible closure and a prison sentence of up to seven and a half years.65 A similar warning was given by the Council for Radio and Television. Consequently, national press, radio, and television reporting has either parroted the government line on the crisis, or been very restrained.

The justice minister also warned that statements about the hunger strike may also be prosecuted under article 454 of the Turkish Criminal Code as incitement to suicide. 66

Twenty-two publications have had issues confiscated because of their reporting on F-type prisons. The daily newspaper Evrensel (Universal), for example, has had three issues confiscated for its coverage of the prison crisis. Fevzi Argun, Ankara representative of Evrensel, told Human Rights Watch:

The large media groups which dominate the daily press and television-newspapers such as Hurriyet, channels such as ATV, do not report developments or they even report in such a way that will worsen the situation. They are silent on the wretched state of the families.67

Similarly, on January 21, Cagdas (Contemporary) Radio in Ankara was also shut down for seven days because it had broadcast news of the hunger strikes.

Punishing the Relatives

We were not able to see any prisoners for a month before the operation because they were on hunger-strike. When the operation happened we went to Malatya Prison and were kept in the rain for an hour before we saw theprosecutor who promised that no harm had been done. When I finally got to see my child a week ago, I did not recognize him. He could barely stand.

Fahriye Gok, speaking of her son Mehmet Ali Gok, transferred from Malatya Prison to Sincan F-type Prison.68

The relatives of the prisoners have certainly suffered heartbreaking misery since December 19, when many of them watched the prison operations from a distance. Families stood as close as the gendarmerie would permit-perhaps a kilometer away-where they were able to hear the gunshots, see the smoke, and smell the tear and pepper gas. Ali Dogan said that relatives waiting for four days outside Umraniye Prison were given no information about the development of the operations inside. "We were beaten and insulted in a really vile way by the gendarmes. But of course we had to be there. We were worried sick about our children. We did not believe that they would come out alive."69

Some prisoners disappeared from view for two weeks or more, reducing whole families to a state of panic. Aysel Koru told Human Rights Watch that she had not yet been able to see her husband, gravely injured during the operation at Canakkale prison two weeks earlier. For more than a week she had been able to get no information about his condition from the prison prosecutor or from the directors at the medical wing of Bayrampasa Prison where she finally established that he was being held. On January 2, she was informed that the top of her husband's cranium had been crushed and that surgery had been carried out to remove the damaged bone, but she was not told how this injury had occurred. When she spoke to Human Rights Watch, she had just labored across the city to get permission to see her husband from the Sultanahmet Public Prosecutor, only to be told, when she arrived at Bayrampasa, that it was a male relatives' visiting day and that she would therefore not be permitted a visit. She made a strong appeal against the official lack of concern she had encountered: "I just want everyone to show some sensitivity and caring. I want you to call on the state to be sensitive. We are at the end of our strength."70

Indeed, the authorities' disregard for the feelings of the relatives is startling. The lawyer Keles Ozturk of the Istanbul Bar told Human Rights Watch that the parents of Muharrem Buldukoglu, missing in the operation at Umraniye prison, searched for two weeks for news of their son, inquiring at hospital after hospital, and repeatedly contacting the Istanbul Public Prosecutor until they were finally confronted with two bodies, both burned beyond recognition, at the morgue of the Istanbul Forensic Medicine Institute. They were informed that DNA tests could be carried out to establish whether either of the bodies belonged to their son, but they would have to pay for the test. The family asked for the test to be carried out, and one of the bodies was established to be that of Muharrem Buldukoglu. They were duly presented an invoice for 600 million TL (approximately $900).

Sema Karatas told Human Rights Watch, "We talk a lot about the prisoners but the families are suffering terribly. My rights are being suspended too." This is particularly true with respect to visits. Families are obliged to wait for hours in all weather outside the walls of the prison, excluded from the existing waiting room for reasons that remain unclear. They have complained of repeated searches that seem designed not so much to maintain prison security as to humiliate and offend the visitor. Sema Karatas said that the search on the first day she visited her husband at Edirne F-type Prison was "ridiculous. People were even required to take their underwear off. It was a sort of rape." Relatives who brought warm clothing and food found that these failed to reach the prisoners, who are supplied by the prison shop reportedly at very high prices.

When family members finally got into the visiting rooms in the last days of December, the prisoners who came to the telephone on the other side of the thick glass were visibly injured, half naked, or without shoes, in addition to being in the late stages of a hunger-strike. Visits are generally no longer than half an hour, and sometimes as shortas five minutes. The relatives had the impression that the prison authorities deliberately interfere with the telephone connection in the visiting booths by turning the volume very low so that the interlocutors are obliged to shout, or by cutting the connection off altogether.

When groups of relatives have gathered to draw attention to the ongoing abuses in the F-type prisons they have been repeatedly cleared from the streets, and frequently ill-treated. Eighty-three relatives of prisoners who had staged a protest at Freedom Square in the Bakirkoy district of Istanbul were beaten and detained on January 14, 2001. Fevziye Kaya, aged fifty-one, reported,

Officers [at Bakirkoy Police Headquarters] had lined up on both sides of the corridor through which we had to pass. We were heavily beaten on our heads with their truncheons. One of their commanders said, "Kill them." They were all cursing at us. Some of us fell down and were kicked. Many of us were injured. I was bleeding from my head and fainted. They took me to the hospital.71

Fevziye Kaya stated that she had a medical report documenting her injuries and would file an official complaint.

62 Human Rights Watch interview, Lutfi Demirkapi, Ankara, January 8, 2001.

63 Ibid.

64 Real name withheld.

65 According to a circular issued on December 22, 2000 by the Security Directorate of the Office of the Ankara Governor, prosecutions would be made under article 169 of the Turkish Criminal Code (supporting an illegal armed organization), and article 526 (disobedience to orders made by authorized bodies in the interests of public health and order).

66 Zaman (Time), March 27, 2001.

67 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Fevzi Argun, January 24, 2001.

68 Human Rights Watch interview with Fahriye Gok, Istanbul, January 3, 2001.

69 Human Rights Watch interview with Ali Dogan, January 2, 2001.

70 Human Rights Watch interview with Aysel Koru, Istanbul, January 3, 2001.

71 Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, Information Note 25, January 17, 2001.

Previous PageTable Of ContentsNext Page