A Turkish lawyers’ association says people jailed following a wave of arrests ahead of NATO’s July summit in Ankara have been beaten, kept apart from other prisoners for extended periods and denied adequate access to outdoor exercise, water and other basic needs, and that it will file criminal complaints against prison officials over the alleged abuses.
According to the T24 news website, the Progressive Lawyers Association (ÇHD), said its lawyers found evidence of physical abuse during visits to a prison in the southern province of Antalya, while detainees held there and at prisons in Kayseri and Konya reported severe restrictions on movement, contact with other prisoners and access to basic necessities. The allegations involve people detained in police operations carried out shortly before the July 7-8 NATO summit.
In Antalya the ÇHD said prisoners were beaten on August 13 after objecting to an order that they stand during a routine prison count. Guards entered their living area, beat them and dragged them on the ground before taking them to another section of the prison, where the beatings continued, according to the association.
Lawyers who subsequently visited the prison recorded visible injuries on the detainees’ bodies, the ÇHD said. The prisoners were taken to a hospital after the incident but were not allowed to see the medical reports produced following their examinations, according to the association.
The ÇHD said it would file criminal complaints against the prison administrators and guards it alleges were responsible.
The association also reported severe restrictions at a juvenile detention facility in the central province of Kayseri, where a 16-year-old identified only by the initials Ö.A. was being kept alone in a cell.
According to lawyers who visited him, the teenager was allowed just 15 minutes of outdoor exercise each day, needed permission from guards to use the toilet and was kept in a cell where the lights remained on day and night. ÇHD lawyers described the conditions as psychological mistreatment.
At a prison in the neighboring province of Konya, ÇHD lawyers said Berdan İdil Öksüz, İlayda Ocak and Taylan İnce were being kept apart from the general population and were not being allowed outdoors.
The lawyers said the detainees were being held in an area infested with rats and did not have adequate access to clean or hot water for washing. Öksüz and Ocak were sharing a bed because the other mattresses were too dirty to use even after they tried to clean them, according to the association.
The Antalya allegations follow an earlier accusation of abuse involving Mehmet Şimşek, a member of the Revolutionary Youth Associations, who was detained on July 5 and subsequently jailed at the same prison.
Lawyers from the ÇHD’s Antalya branch said at the time that Şimşek told them a guard head-butted and insulted him during his admission to the prison and that he was later beaten with batons. He was taken to a hospital and examined after repeatedly seeking medical attention, according to his lawyers.
The detainees were among scores of journalists, lawyers, academics, students, activists and members of political and civil society groups taken into custody across Turkey in operations immediately preceding the NATO summit.
More than 100 people were detained in coordinated raids in at least 18 provinces on July 5, according to Turkish media reports. Thirty-three people from one group of detainees were referred to court, with prosecutors seeking their arrest, while others faced requests for judicial supervision.
The raids came as Turkish authorities imposed heightened security measures in Ankara for the NATO gathering, which brought leaders of the alliance’s member states to the Turkish capital on July 7 and 8.
Allegations of mistreatment had already emerged from the pre-summit arrests. Nine people detained in Istanbul on July 5 and jailed three days later filed a separate criminal complaint in July accusing police officers of torture, ill-treatment and threats while they were in custody.
