We had already col­lect­ed a num­ber of tes­ti­monies con­cern­ing arbi­trary con­trols on entry into Turkey by per­sons liv­ing abroad but orig­i­nal­ly from Turkey, whether bina­tion­als or not.

In his arti­cle in Turk­ish on Novem­ber 10, Artı Gerçek, relates oth­er tes­ti­monies that match up with ours.

Euro­pean trav­ellers, orig­i­nal­ly from Turkey, are sub­ject­ed to ille­gal con­trols, espe­cial­ly in Istan­bul’s two air­ports, Sabi­ha Gökçen and Atatürk.

They are side­lined in a ded­i­cat­ed space. Their elec­tron­ic gear is con­fis­cat­ed. The pass­words request­ed to ver­i­fy the con­tent of the equip­ment and to gain access to their var­i­ous inter­net accounts, includ­ing social media.

Artı Gerçek illus­trates his arti­cle with the tes­ti­mo­ny of a Ger­man nation­al, orig­i­nal­ly from Turkey. This per­son speaks Kur­dish and request­ed anonymi­ty for secu­ri­ty rea­sons. The per­son states that in enter­ing Turkey at pass­port con­trol, air­port police­men took her into an iso­lat­ed space that resem­bled a police sta­tion. She was ques­tioned con­cern­ing her pri­vate life and sub­ject­ed to an ille­gal con­trol of the con­tents of her phone. While she was detained in this space, she was not the only per­son being con­trolled. She spec­i­fies that per­sons refus­ing to com­mu­ni­cate the pass­words for their equip­ment are sub­ject­ed to inap­pro­pri­ate ges­tures, and ver­bal or phys­i­cal threats.

The per­son also tes­ti­fies that after her ille­gal­ly con­fis­cat­ed phone was returned, she noticed that con­nec­tions had been done with­out her con­sent on her var­i­ous web accounts.

These prac­tices became gen­er­al­ized fol­low­ing the dec­la­ra­tion of the state of emer­gency on July 20 2016, fol­low­ing the abort­ed putsch, and repeat­ed five times since. The last exten­sion was done on Octo­ber 17 for an addi­tion­al three months.

The vic­tims of these ille­gal prac­tices then feel­ing threat­ened, hes­i­tate to con­tact the media and do not file com­plaints. Yet, their tes­ti­monies are numerous.

State of emer­gency or not, these police prac­tices are total­ly ille­gal as they stand.

We do not have suf­fi­cient evi­dence at Kedis­tan con­cern­ing the sys­tem­ati­za­tion and gen­er­al­iza­tion of this prac­tice. But it has increased and the pub­li­ca­tion of tes­ti­mo­ni­als allows for fur­ther­ing its denunciation.

Here is one we pub­lished as a short sto­ry in 2016 : Expul­sion : “My Ori­ent express by plane”
Pleas­ant reading!


Français : Turquie • Con­trôles ou vio­la­tions de vie privée ? Cliquez pour lire

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