A civil inspector who was dismissed as part of Turkey’s massive post-coup purge of public sector employees has claimed that he was severely tortured in custody following his detention in 2017, the Kronos news website reported on Monday.
In a letter he sent to journalist Sevinç Özarslan on condition of anonymity should she report on it, the purge victim said he was held in custody for 14 days in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa.
He said he was coerced into becoming an informant through brutal interrogation techniques including strangulation, severe beatings on his ribs and verbal abuse and threats.
“When my lawyer came for a visit, they [the police officers] told me not to reveal anything and threatened that I wouldn’t be able to ever get out of there if I didn’t comply,” he said.
“They allowed me to see my lawyer for 15 minutes during which time they stayed with us. I was afraid, so I couldn’t tell my lawyer anything.”
Journalist Özarslan said she has in the past reported several cases of torture from the Şanlıurfa police department, involving people detained on alleged links to the Gülen movement, a faith-based group targeted by the Turkish government.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement since the corruption investigations of December 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement after an abortive putsch in 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
Turkish authorities routinely rely on witness statements as evidence to identify and prosecute members of the group.
The defendants in the trials against the movement are often encouraged to benefit from the country’s repentance laws allowing for reduced penalties in exchange for denouncing other members of the group.
In recent years, there have been many reports about the alleged use of torture and ill-treatment in custody to coerce detainees into becoming informants and incriminating others.
The account of the alleged victim of torture also involved being coerced into signing a self-incriminating statement at the end of the detention.
“On day 12, they put a document in front of me and told me to sign it as my confession,” he said. “They wanted me to sign it without reading it first. I was afraid so I signed it without reading it.”
The victim said he was released from prison last year, after serving a lengthy sentence.
Torture in custody and in prisons is a systematic problem in Turkey about which local rights groups, parliamentarians and state authorities receive hundreds of complaints every year.
Last Friday, the UN’s Committee Against Torture released the findings of its latest periodic review of Turkey, expressing alarm at continued allegations of torture and ill-treatment in the country’s detention centers and prisons.
The UN body’s observations included allegations of beatings and sexual assault by law enforcement officers as well as a lack of effective investigation into such allegations stemming from the erosion of the independence of the judiciary.
Earlier this year, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution that expressed concern about an increase in alleged incidents reported from Turkey in past years.
