A left-wing Turkish student activist said men he described as police officers abducted and tortured him in Ankara in an attempt to force him to become an informant, the Bianet news website reported.
Hasan Basri Usta, a Hacettepe University student and a member of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF), said the men, who appeared to know details of his past, demanded information about fellow activists and pressured him to make false statements against them. They also offered him money to abandon his political activities and threatened to kill him if he refused to cooperate.
Usta, who also works while attending university, said he was returning home from his job in Ankara’s Dikimevi neighborhood on October 15 when two men stopped him near his home and asked to speak with him. When he refused, several others got out of a black SUV, beat him and forced him into the vehicle, where they blindfolded him.
Usta said the men continued beating him inside the vehicle and tried to force him to unlock his phone with his fingerprint. About three hours later, they drove him to a remote area in Ankara’s Mamak district and left him there blindfolded.
Usta also described the alleged abduction in a series of posts on X on Wednesday.
Usta was jailed pending trial in June during a crackdown ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara that also targeted SGDF members. He was released pending trial at his first hearing on August 26. He said the men referred to his time in jail and threatened to have him jailed again for a longer period of time, warning that he might not be able to complete his studies.
Usta, also a member of the Human Rights Association (İHD), said he went to a hospital several hours after the alleged abduction and obtained a medical report documenting his injuries. He said he submitted the report to İHD and that he and the association planned to file criminal complaints with prosecutors and police and apply to the Turkish Parliament’s Human Rights Investigation Commission.
In August Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and a human rights defender, documented 73 alleged abductions and disappearances in Turkey since 2015, involving public employees dismissed by emergency decrees, people accused of links to the Gülen movement and political activists. He said some remain missing, while others later resurfaced in police custody and reported that they had been held at secret locations, tortured and pressured to become informants.
