Detainees were beaten, kept handcuffed for hours and denied access to lawyers and medical care during a recent crackdown on LGBTQ+ people and organizations in İstanbul, the İstanbul Bar Association said in a report released Monday.
The report documented widespread online restrictions, saying the websites of 11 LGBTQ+ organizations and 419 social media accounts were blocked, while authorities moved to block another 107 accounts. Those affected included university LGBTQ+ groups, media outlets, journalists and the Ankara Bar Association’s LGBTQ+ Rights Center.
The report covers the crackdown in İstanbul between September 12 and 16, during which six civil society organizations were targeted in police operations, 35 people were detained and 20 were jailed pending trial.
The report also said confidentiality orders prevented lawyers from accessing investigation files, while information from the same files was shared with the media. The bar association said this violated the presumption of innocence and criticized the criminalization of rights groups and activists on “vague and unspecified grounds.”
The bar association also documented the detention of 107 people, including seven lawyers, at a protest outside the İstanbul Courthouse in Çağlayan on September 15. It said police intervened without first ordering the crowd to disperse or providing a safe route for protesters to leave.
Those detained were surrounded by police, beaten, grabbed by the throat and handcuffed with their hands behind their backs, according to the report. It said all 107 detainees were handcuffed in this manner, with three kept in restraints for about six and a half hours.
Lawyers seeking to meet with the detainees were prevented from entering the İstanbul Police Department for about nine and a half hours despite repeated requests, according to the report.
The bar association also documented problems with medical care, including a detainee whose shoulder was dislocated during the police intervention but who was not taken to a hospital. It said some detainees were unable to obtain their daily medication and were not provided adequate food or meals meeting special dietary needs.
The bar association said one of the 107 detainees was released, while questioning of the remaining 106 was completed by the following morning. Their detention was nevertheless extended for another 24 hours.
The detentions and restrictions are part of the nationwide “My Family Is Safe” crackdown, which began on September 12 and, according to Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, has involved legal proceedings against 162 people, nine associations and 13 businesses in 15 provinces. The latest figures show that 82 people have been jailed pending trial, while authorities have also moved to shut down two LGBTQ+ rights groups in the southern province of Mersin.
Among the organizations targeted are Kaos GL, LİSTAG, SPoD, Lambdaistanbul, HEVİ LGBTİ+, Pozitif Yaşam and Pozitif-İz. The investigations involve accusations including obscenity, prostitution, drug possession and establishing a criminal organization.
The crackdown has drawn criticism from the UN human rights office, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which have raised concerns about the detentions and restrictions and called on Turkey to respect fundamental rights. International rights and press freedom groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Press Institute (IPI) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) have also condemned the measures and called for the release of people detained or jailed for their rights advocacy or journalistic work.
In Turkey, bar associations, rights organizations and opposition politicians have criticized the operations and called for an end to measures targeting LGBTQ+ people and organizations.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and senior officials from his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have increasingly portrayed LGBTQ+ visibility as a threat to public morality and family values, while authorities have for years restricted Pride marches and publicly targeted LGBTQ+ advocacy.
