A Turkish opposition lawmaker has alleged serious rights abuses at İzmir Şakran Women’s Prison, including denial of medical care, strip-searches and arbitrary restrictions on release, saying the conditions amount to crimes against humanity, according to the TR724 news website.
The allegations came from Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) lawmaker and human rights defender Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, who said after meeting with several inmates that the prison was “slack, disorganized and unsupervised” and the worst-managed facility he had ever seen.
Gergerlioğlu said access to medical care was severely limited, with some inmates waiting four to six months to be taken to the infirmary. He cited the cases of Didem Erdoğan, 51, a heart patient needing a stent whose surgery has reportedly been delayed due to prison conditions, while Cemile Konca, who has suffered from rheumatism since 2019, has not been able to access the infirmary for four months and is being denied a gluten-free diet despite having celiac disease.
He also alleged that strip-searches were widespread, saying many women described the experience in tears and that the practice had caused lasting trauma.
Gergerlioğlu further said conditions for mothers are especially dire, as the closure of the children’s unit for political prisoners has prevented mothers from staying with their children.
He also criticized the prison administration for housing inmates convicted over links to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) alongside women jailed over alleged ties to the Gülen movement, calling the practice unacceptable. The Gülen movement is a worldwide civic initiative rooted in the spiritual and humanistic tradition of Islam and inspired by the ideas and activism of the late Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim cleric who lived in exile in the US until his death in October 2024.
The lawmaker also alleged that conditional release and supervised probation rights are being arbitrarily denied and that transfer requests to other prisons are going unmet.
Under the Turkish Penal Code, inmates who have completed three-fourths of their sentence and have less than one year remaining are eligible for release on probation. However, administrative oversight boards, established in Turkish prisons in January 2021, have faced criticism for arbitrarily rejecting or delaying the parole or probation of political prisoners including on grounds such as “failure to display remorse.”
Gergerlioğlu criticized the prison administrators who refused to meet with him and accused them of lying to avoid accountability. He said he would bring the violations to the attention of the highest authorities and international platforms.
According to a 2025 report by the Human Rights Association (İHD), at least 1,412 inmates, including hundreds who are critically ill, are being held in Turkish prisons under conditions that violate their right to health.
