A recent report by the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TİHV) revealed that in 2024 the organization received 722 applications related to ill-treatment, primarily at the hands of law enforcement.
According to the report, the southeastern province of Van received the highest number of applications, with 251 cases, followed by Istanbul with 205 and Diyarbakır with 166. Applications from Kurdish-majority regions, primarily in southeastern Turkey, accounted for 57.8 percent of all cases. Nearly 4 percent of the cases involved the mistreatment of minors, the youngest of which was 5 years old. Most cases of mistreatment occurred primarily in detention centers, but also during public demonstrations, protests and arrests, during which beatings and handcuffing in positions that cause significant discomfort were common. The most common forms of abuse included the excessive use of plastic bullets, pepper spray, water cannons, physical beatings and verbal insults. The report found that in prisons, practices such as strip-searches and sexual harassment continued systematically. The European Court of Human Rights has found strip-searches to constitute degrading treatment when not justified by compelling security reasons and/or due to the way they were conducted. But the practice has been frequently used by Turkish security forces against inmates and detainees. According to the report, one of the key triggers of police mistreatment was the wave of mass protests that erupted after the Turkish government removed democratically elected mayors in several provinces following the March 2024 local elections.
