At the four F-type prisons which are currently in operation-at Edirne, Kandira, Sincan, and Tekirdag1-prisoners are being held either in single-person or three-person cells that include a small yard exclusive to those units. These new facilities are a stark contrast to the large ward-based system that is typical in older Turkish prisons. Prisoners may leave their cells once a week if a member of their immediate family visits. Otherwise, they are held permanently in the unit in what has been termed "small group isolation." 

A wide range of medical studies indicate that confinement in solitary or small group isolation can be physically and mentally damaging. Impaired vision and hearing, hallucinations, tinnitus, weakening of the immune system, amenorrhea, premature menopause, depression, anxiety, and aggressive behavior are among the effects documented in studies of prisoners, volunteers, and animals. 

In the Turkish context, concerns about the direct effects of isolation are augmented by a suspicion that the closed environment of an isolation unit may facilitate torture, ill-treatment, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading abuses. Torture is a long-standing problem in Turkish police stations and gendarmeries. Most observers, including the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and the U.N. Committee for the Prevention of Torture agree that incommunicado detention-the lack of access to family, independent medical care, and legal counsel-is the single most important factor in the persistence of torture. Turkish prisons do not have a good reputation, but it is nevertheless true that detainees blindfolded and tortured under police interrogation are frequently relieved when a court formally commits them to prison-because only then will they be able to reestablish contact with the outside world. Families, well aware of the history of death and "disappearance" in Turkish police stations, are often similarly relieved when their relative arrives safely in prison. 

To prisoners and families with such experiences, the introduction of isolation units in prisons looks very much like an indefinite extension of the system of incommunicado detention which has facilitated abuse in police lock-ups. Indeed, accounts by prisoners and their families suggest that, as in police custody, guards in F-type prisons have taken advantage of the closed environment to beat and abuse their charges. Legal and medical institutions that could document, challenge, and prevent such abuses have had only limited access. Background Human Rights Watch first addressed the Turkish government about the F-type prisons in July 1999, pointing out that although the F-type prison building program was by then quite advanced, no information had been made public as to how these prisons were going to be managed. Human Rights Watch raised two primary concerns regarding the cell-based system, which is at the center of the current controversy in Turkey: 

1. The cell-based system may amount to ill-treatment if accompanied by an isolation regime that permits no access to educational or recreational activities or other sources of mental stimulation, confines prisoners toa monotonous unvaried environment, and enforces either solitary confinement or social interaction with a strictly limited group of cell-mates. 

2. Isolation may also increase the risk of ill-treatment of prisoners by prison staff.

Human Rights Watch pointed out that if the Justice Ministry did not make clear its intentions vis-à-vis the new prisons, it was likely that prisoners would resort to forms of protest such as hunger strikes, which in turn could trigger violent and fatal interventions, as had frequently occurred in the past. Human Rights Watch urged the ministry to give detailed information about prisoners' access to education, exercise and library facilities, and about daily out-of-cell time. In September 1999, the Justice Ministry's Director of Prisons wrote in a letter to Human Rights Watch that "the regime in these new prisons will not be different from others and will be subject to the same regulations governing other correctional institutions in Turkey," but provided no details.

In fact, some clues as to the planned management of the F-type prisons could be gathered from the regime that was already in place at Kartal Special Type Prison, near Istanbul, which is physically similar to the F-type prisons. Since 1998, prisoners held under the Anti-Terror Law2 at Kartal were locked down in their units twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, only emerging for family visits. When the Justice Ministry was challenged by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) on its management of Kartal, the ministry replied "Kartal Special Type Prison...was brought into service for reasons of urgency before its facilities for social, cultural and sports activities could be completed.... the prison does have a few facilities for activities. However, both for security reasons and because under the relevant legislation remand prisoners cannot be forced to take part in activities if they do not want to, for this reason the required rate of use has not yet been achieved."3 Evidence from prisoners released from Kartal and interviews with prisoners' families suggest that the Turkish government's response was disingenuous-that inmates are in fact desperate to get out of their isolation units. Far from having to be "forced to take part in activities," they would gladly participate and associate, but have never been offered the opportunity.

In May 2000, Human Rights Watch met with the director of prisons of the Ministry of Justice to discuss our concerns about the isolation regime imposed at Kartal Special Type Prison and our alarm that the authorities might attempt to extend this same regime to the F-type prisons. Director Ali Suat Ertosun made no commitment to allow prisoners to leave their units for a reasonable part of the day, and appeared not to have given serious thought to the potentially damaging nature of the isolation implicit in the new cell system. Ministry officials did not accept that the term "small group isolation" was applicable to the permanent and unrelieved confinement of three people, and said that such treatment was appropriate for prisoners held under the Anti-Terror Law. 

Over the summer, tension grew among prisoners held under the Anti-Terror Law, who feared a possible transfer to F-type prisons, and the risk of prison protests increased. Past prisoner protests-hunger-strikes and ward occupations-had fatal consequences. In 1996 twelve prisoners died in a death fast staged against threatened transfers into isolation and in September 1999 ten prisoners occupying a ward at Ankara Central Closed Prison were shot dead or beaten to death by gendarmes. On May 24, 2000, Human Rights Watch expressed its foreboding in a report entitled "Small Group Isolation in Turkish Prisons: An Avoidable Disaster." The report recommended that the Justice Ministry lift isolation at Kartal Prison, give unambiguous undertakings that isolation would not be applied in the newF-type prisons, and introduce monitoring systems that would include access and inspection by impartial bodies such as bar associations, independent medical practitioners, nongovernmental human rights organizations, or a board of prison visitors who would visit prisons, talk to prisoners and staff, and report on their findings. 

In July 2000, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) of the Council of Europe visited the F-type prison at Sincan, which was at that time in the final stages of construction. The Turkish authorities have not yet authorized the publication of the CPT's report on the July 16-24 visit, but did permit release of the preliminary observations. Concerning the F-type prisons, the CPT stated that "there is no objection in principle towards smaller living units, always provided that inmates have an opportunity to spend a reasonable part of each day outside their living units, engaged in useful activities."4 The CPT has taken a close interest in the planned move from ward-based to cell-based prisons in Turkey. The committee visited ward-based prisons in December 2000 and newly opened F-type prisons in January 2001. The Turkish government has not yet authorized publication of the report on the December 2000/January 2001 visit, but the preliminary observations for that visit were published on March 16, 2001. Human Rights Watch urges the Turkish government to authorize the publication of all outstanding CPT reports. 

In August the Justice Ministry produced two draft laws. The first would amend article 16 of the Anti-Terror Law to provide a legal basis for prisoners to exit their isolation units, and the second would provide for the establishment of local boards of prison visitors who would visit. Human Rights Watch welcomed this new and positive approach, while urging that both drafts be further developed. Unfortunately, the drafts have not yet been adopted by the Turkish parliament, and were apparently completely forgotten when the F-type prisons were later pressed into service. 

In October, some groups of Anti-Terror Law prisoners went on hunger strike. They had a broad range of demands, but the central issue was their opposition to F-type prisons.

Efforts to resolve the hunger strike before lives were lost reached a high point on December 9, after a group of well-respected journalists and writers, as well as representatives of the Human Rights Commission of the Turkish parliament, met Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk. After this meeting, the justice minister held a press conference in which he said that his ministry was considering instituting a review of the F-type prison program, with the participation of nongovernmental organizations and experts, so as to achieve a social consensus on the new prisons. The minister also made public commitments that the new prisons would not open until three laws had been passed: an amendment to article 16 providing for prisoners to emerge from their units during the day, a law providing for access by boards of visitors, and a regulation that would provide the framework for the management of the prisons. The minister indicated that this might take six months or more.

The prisoners, however, continued their hunger strike because the minister refused to put his undertakings in writing. The lawyer Husnu Ondul, president of the Turkish Human Rights Association (HRA), expressed the view that behind the mutual intransigence lay the government's long-standing failure to engage in any kind of communication or dialogue concerning its F-type project: "The government refused to talk to the HRA and other civil society organizations about these prisons until the fifty-fifth day of the hunger-strike. By then the government was only interested in solving the particular issue of the hunger-strike, and had put itself in the position of talking to the most extreme and radical groups-that narrow sector of the prison population which was ready to use death as a solution and a weapon. Two years before this crisis blew up, they should have been talking to the Bar, and the HRA and organizations like yours."5 At 4:30 a.m. on December 19, 2000, ten thousand gendarmes broke into wards in twenty prisons throughout Turkey. In some prisons inmates offered little resistance, or were overcome within a few minutes. In others, pitched battles lasted for more than a day. At Istanbul's Umraniye E-type Closed Prison, fighting continued until December 23. 

The intervention was named "Operation Return to Life" and presented to the media as an intervention to save the lives of 205 prisoners on death fast. But by early January, thirty-two people-including two gendarmes-were dead, and more than 2,000 prisoners were on hunger strike. One thousand and forty prisoners had been transferred to Edirne, Kandira, and Sincan F-type prisons. Prisoners reported being subjected to beatings, torture, and ritual humiliation during transfer and on arrival at the new prisons. There were also allegations that unwarranted force was used during the intervention, and that prisoners were arbitrarily killed. Finally it was clear that, as had been feared all along, a regime of intense solitary or small group isolation was being imposed in the F-type prisons. The Turkish government, having refusing to respond to calls from prisoners' families, lawyers, human rights organizations, and intergovernmental bodies, failed to avert the avoidable disaster.  1 Tekirdag F-type Prison opened on February 23, 2001.

2 The Anti-Terror Law passed in April 1991 defines "terrorism" in extremely wide terms, and imposes prison sentences for some nonviolent political activities as well as offenses of violence and conspiracy to commit violence. Article 16 states "The sentences of those convicted under the provisions of this Law will be executed in special penal institutions built on a system of rooms for one or three people. In these institutions, open visits shall not be permitted. Contact and communication between convicted prisoners will be prevented. The provisions... shall also apply to remanded prisoners." 

3 Response of the Turkish Government to the preliminary observations of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture on their visit to Turkey 16-24 July 2000 (CPT/Inf (2000) 19 [EN]), December 7, 2000. 

4 Preliminary observations of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture on their visit to Turkey 16-24 July 2000 (CPT/Inf (2000) 19 [EN]), December 7, 2000.

5 Human Rights Watch interview, Husnu Ondul, Ankara, January 4, 2001.