“I was beaten, sexually abused and threatened with harm to my wife and child while in police custody,” said Ahmet, a former teacher detained and later arrested following a July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
Speaking to the Stockholm Center for Freedom, the former teacher said he had been working at a school that was linked to the Gülen movement which had been shut down by government decree shortly after the aborted coup. It was one of 1,069 private schools shuttered by the government over links to the movement.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following an abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Gülen and the movement strongly denied involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Around the time of the coup, Ahmet and his wife had just welcomed a new baby into their family. Fearing arrest with an infant, they immediately went into hiding. For nearly a year, the couple managed to evade the authorities. However, in October 2017, their home in Turkey’s Afyon province was raided, and the police finally caught up with them.
“On of them [police officers] put a gun to my head and told me not to move, not to speak. I told them my wife and child were present and to please are calm down. They eased up a little and searched our home for nearly four hours until midnight but found nothing. They took only our phones,” he said.
Ahmet, his wife and 1 year old were taken to the Afyon police department, where the mother and child were put in a separate cell.
“We begged the officers to let our family come pick the baby up, but they refused. Our family wasn’t even notified about our detention,” he said.
One of the women who was being held in the same cell as his wife notified their family after being released. They eventually arrived to pick up the baby, but Ahmet and his wife were kept in detention for 15 more days.
“I’ll never forget the officer who interrogated me, his name was Teoman. He brought me into his office and immediately began beating me. He slapped, kicked and cursed at me. He told me he had a template statement prepared and if I signed it, I could walk out with my family. If not, he would torture me for 15 days straight,” said Ahmet.
On the document were names of people allegedly linked to the Gülen movement, and by signing it Ahmet would be confirming that he knew them and of their links to the group. However, he refused to sign any pre-prepared document, and the beatings intensified.
That’s when two more officers entered and continued the beating for about an hour.
“They shoved my head into a trash can, kept me there for a long time, then brought me back. Teoman resumed the abuse, saying he knew I was asthmatic. He said he could strangle me, and no one would question my death. He said he could throw me out the window and say I killed myself. He threatened to rape me and my wife, to put our child in state care, and said we’d never see her again.
Ahmet said they used electroshock devices on his hands and chest. At one point, the officers poured water over him and electroshocked his back, causing him to pass out from the pain.
When he regained consciousness, he noticed his hands were bleeding as he had ripped off the plastic restraints when he fainted.
During interrogation Ahmet was also asked about using the ByLock messaging app, which he denied ever using.
ByLock, once widely available online, has been considered a secret tool of communication among supporters of the movement since the coup attempt, despite the lack of any evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch.
During his interrogation, Ahmet was denied access to legal counsel, despite repeatedly requesting to see a lawyer. On October 24, he provided a written statement, believing that the interrogation — and his ordeal — had finally come to an end. However, this was not the case since he was pulled into questioning one more time by multiple officers.
“They pulled me into the interrogation room and immediately started beating me again. They used a truncheon and beat my legs and back. Then they showed me some new documents and said I had to sign them. When I refused, they threatened my wife and child again. They kept using my family against me. I was in a terrible state both physically and mentally. I told them again I wanted a lawyer, that I wouldn’t sign anything without my lawyer. They refused again. Eventually, they took me back down to the holding cell. By this time, my health was deteriorating. I was dizzy, my wrists were swollen from the cuffs, and I had bruises all over.”
The officers threatened Ahmet with taking him to an empty factory and killing him. They pulled him into a different room, where there were several gendarmes who had their phones out and were appearing to be filming him. In this room, one officer sexually abused Ahmet.
“He [the officer] started touching my genitals and caressing my body inappropriately. Despite my telling him to stop, he continued doing the same thing from behind. The other police officers in the room watched and laughed. This continued for about 10 minutes. Then they took me out of the room and passed me over to Teoman, who had a baton. He told me to turn around and tried to pull down my pants. My hands were handcuffed, but I tried to resist. This time, without pulling my pants down, he tried to insert the baton through my clothing into my rectum.”
Ahmet was returned to his cell following the abuse. His interrogation ended at that point, and the next day he appeared in court, where he provided the prosecutor with a detailed account of his experiences. Although he was examined by a doctor, the torture he endured was not officially recorded. However, at Ahmet’s request, the visible bruises and injuries on his body were documented, though without any mention of torture.
Eventually, both Ahmet and his wife were imprisoned, with their 1-year-old daughter staying with her mother. Ahmet spent more than four years behind bars.
The Afyon police department is notorious for mistreatment and sexual abuse. The Constitutional Court ruled in favor of an applicant who claimed that he was tortured for 25 days during his detention at Afyon in 2016. The court ordered the government to pay TL 50,000 in non-pecuniary damages and to launch an investigation into the perpetrators. In October 2020 another victim, Mehmet Eren, talked about his ordeal and how police officers threatened him with sexually assaulting his daughter and brought his wife in for interrogation. In September 2020 Müberra and Murat Boşcu, who were detained by the Afyon police on October 17, 2016, talked about how they were subjected to torture including electroshocks and beatings.
In addition to torture and ill-treatment, the Afyon police department also made headlines over accusations of theft of detainees’ money and valuables. According to a court document dated July 1, 2020, a public prosecutor said Arif Alpaslan, the former head of the police counterterrorism unit (TEM), spent detainees’ money and valuables on an online gambling site.
Allegations of torture and mistreatment have become worryingly common in Turkey following the coup attempt, when thousands of people were detained and arrested on bogus terrorism or coup charges.
According to a report by the UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, on his mission to Turkey from November 27 to December 2, 2016, “torture and other forms of ill-treatment were widespread” in Turkey.
The report found there were numerous consistent allegations received by the special rapporteur in the immediate aftermath of the failed coup.
The special rapporteur heard reports of severe beatings, punches and kicking, blows with objects, foot whipping, threats and verbal abuse, being forced to strip naked, rape with objects and other sexual violence or threats thereof, sleep deprivation, stress positions and extended blindfolding and/or handcuffing for several days, according to the report.
Human rights groups, including the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), have repeatedly sounded the alarm over Turkey’s deteriorating human rights record. Hundreds of torture complaints have been filed in recent years, while victims and their lawyers say investigations are rarely conducted and perpetrators are almost never prosecuted.
