Turkey has detained six European activists who traveled to the country to examine the prison conditions of political detainees and moved them toward deportation, Agence France-Presse reported.
The group was detained in İstanbul on Thursday after meeting with a legal collective known as the Office of People’s Rights (HHB), said Naim Eminoğlu, head of the İstanbul branch of the Progressive Lawyers Association (CHD), who is representing them.
Eminoğlu said the six activists are from Italy, France, Spain, Belgium and Russia. He said police told them they were being held ahead of expulsion and confiscated their passports.
He said they were taken to the migration directorate and were not allowed to meet with their lawyers. He said the CHD later learned they were being taken to İstanbul Airport for deportation.
The HHB, which is known for defending people seen as political opponents, has been repeatedly targeted by Turkish authorities over alleged links to the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party Front (DHKP-C), a far-left group designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the US. The collective denies the allegation.
The HHB said the visitors came as part of an observation mission focused on what it described as Turkey’s “pit-type” prison system and the use of solitary confinement for some political prisoners. A French member of the activists’ collective confirmed the account to AFP.
Turkey has faced criticism from rights organizations over allegations that some detainees are held in small cells with limited daylight and kept in isolation, conditions critics say harm physical and mental health.
A Spanish party, the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE), said on X that one of its members was detained as part of the delegation. The party called the detentions arbitrary and linked them to the group’s prison monitoring mission.
The detentions came the same day Turkish police detained a Turkish journalist working for German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Prosecutors said he was detained on accusations of spreading false news and insulting the president. DW called for his immediate release.
