The Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Turkey’s Muğla province has launched an investigation into those who photographed a detention procedure that included stripping suspected militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) naked, according to the Diken news portal.
Seven people were stripped naked with their hands tied on their back before they were detained as part of an investigation into the PKK in Turkey’s resort province of Muğla on October 4.
Gendarmerie stopped a car in a rural area upon a complaint that three people suspected of PKK links would carry out terrorist attack on multiple locations in Muğla. The suspects were stripped off their clothes on suspicion that they were carrying explosives and guns.
It had come out that the the people detained and strip-searched by Turkish security forces in Muğla are brothers and cousins. The Security Directorate of Muğla had called the families and informed them of the detention of seven people who have been identified as Ekrem Altay, Veysi Şengil, İsmail Bozdağ, Velat Asan, Mehmet Can Yiğiner, Mustafa Yiğiner and Adnan Yiğiner.
Turkish authorities had conducted direct talks with the jailed PKK chief Abdullah Öcalan for several years until a truce in effect collapsed in the summer of 2015. Since then, there have been heavy clashes between the PKK and Turkish security forces.
More than 40,000 people, including 5,500 security force members, have been killed in four decades of fighting between the Turkish state and the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU.
Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by the Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) has showed that 280 journalists and media workers are now in jails as of October 8, 2017, most in pre-trial detention languishing in notorious Turkish prisons without even a conviction. Of those in Turkish prisons, 255 are arrested pending trial, only 25 journalists remain convicted and serving time in Turkish prisons. An outstanding detention warrants remain for 134 journalists who live in exile or remain at large in Turkey.
Detaining tens of thousands of people over alleged links to the movement, the government also closed down more than 180 media outlets after the controversial coup attempt. (SCF with turkeypurge.com)
