A Kurdish Iranian journalist who spent about a year at a removal center in northwestern Turkey said guards beat him four or five times and repeatedly tried to force him to sign deportation papers, The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday.
Zanyar Aziznezhad said Turkish police detained him near İstanbul on July 4, 2023, as he was attempting to travel to Europe and subsequently held him at the Kocaeli Removal Center, where he said he was subjected to beatings, poor conditions and repeated attempts to secure his agreement to deportation.
Aziznezhad stated that he was initially kept overnight in a crowded room with about 40 people without water, food, blankets or basic hygiene supplies before being transferred to a roughly 12-square-meter room intended for four people but occupied by 12 detainees.
He said guards beat him four or five times after he bought more cigarettes than detainees were permitted to purchase. He also said that about every 15 days he was taken to an officer’s room and pressured to sign a deportation form.
Aziznezhad alleged that four or five guards would take him into a room without security cameras, beat him and try to force him to sign the document. He said he refused because he could not safely return to Iran and thus endured the treatment throughout his year in detention.
He had previously been recognized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as a political asylum-seeker in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN), an organization that documents rights violations affecting Kurds in Iran. KHRN reported in November 2023, while Aziznezhad was still detained, that he faced possible forcible return to Iran.
Aziznezhad, who is from Saqqez in western Iran, fled the country in 2018 because of fears of political persecution, according to The Jerusalem Post. KHRN said he had worked since 2019 in the media department of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, an Iranian Kurdish opposition group.
Aziznezhad also described severe restrictions and unsanitary conditions at the Kocaeli center, saying detainees were allowed outdoors for only 20 minutes a day and had no proper shower facilities, forcing them to wash in toilets. He said he developed skin problems several times and alleged that medical care was generally provided only to detainees who agreed to deportation or were critically ill.
He stated that detainees received only a small bar of soap each week and that meals were irregular, sometimes consisting of bread delivered in garbage bags or food served on reused disposable trays.
Aziznezhad further alleged that Turkish authorities systematically pressured migrants and asylum-seekers to sign deportation documents so Turkey could demonstrate that it was preventing irregular migration to Europe and continue receiving European funding.
The European Union has provided billions of euros to Turkey for refugee assistance and migration management. Amnesty International said in its 2025-26 assessment of Turkey that refugees and migrants in the country continued to face a risk of unlawful return.
Aziznezhad said representatives of the Association for Social Development and Aid Mobilization (ASAM), a Turkish nongovernmental organization that assists refugees and asylum-seekers, occasionally visited the Kocaeli center but alleged that authorities prevented them from seeing abuse. He said he saw no other international organizations visit during his detention.
