Torture is back, and in women’s prisons

Since mid 2015 con­di­tions have become harsh­er for polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Turkey. Repres­sion crossed anoth­er thresh­old fol­low­ing the coup d’état and the state of emergency.

Tor­ture, both phys­i­cal and moral, has reap­peared on a large scale in recent times, notably against women.
As an illus­tra­tion, here are trans­la­tions of excerpts from arti­cles pub­lished by the JINHA Agency.

ISTANBUL

Lawyers from the “People’s Bureau of Jurists” (HHB – Halkın Hukuk Büro­su) declared that the women detainees exiled to high secu­ri­ty prison No. 9 in Silivri were sub­ject­ed to tor­ture by the guards. They brought the inci­dent to the Director’s atten­tion. His answer: “Our guards are men, we’re not in charge of that.”

Vio­la­tion of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers’ rights start­ed again with the state of emer­gency declared fol­low­ing the attempt­ed coup d’etat on July 15 2016.

Fol­low­ing alle­ga­tions of tor­ture in Sakran prison in Izmir, the detainees in Silivri declared they had also been tor­tured by the guards. The HHB con­firmed that the women exiled from the Bakirköy prison to Silivri No.9 were also tortured.

Accord­ing to the HHB’s state­ment, their client Sev­can Adıguzel was assault­ed for hav­ing shout­ed out slo­gans: “They slammed her head against the wall, our client start­ed to bleed from the nose. They squeezed her breasts. Our client was sub­ject­ed to tor­ture and harass­ment. The guards even resort­ed to nee­dles against our client when those vio­lences occurred in the cell.”

The state­ment adds that their oth­er client, Kübra Sün­netçi, was also sub­ject­ed to tor­ture in the same prison.

The HHB lawyers brought the tor­ture to the Director’s atten­tion. He replied: “Tell them not to resist. This is a men’s prison. Our guards are men. We are not respon­si­ble for inci­dents that might happen.”

The state­ment notes there are wit­ness­es and med­ical reports con­firm­ing the tor­ture prac­ticed in the jail.

AMED

Xece Yaman of TUHAD-FED (Fed­er­a­tion for sol­i­dar­i­ty and union with pris­on­ers’ fam­i­lies) informs that the pris­on­ers are orga­niz­ing a col­lec­tive or indi­vid­ual hunger strike against tor­ture and pres­sure tac­tics in pris­ons. Hun­dreds of pris­on­ers were placed in soli­tary con­fine­ment this year, while oth­ers were put in over­crowd­ed cells. The Fed­er­a­tion invites to a ris­ing up and mobi­liza­tion in sup­port for the detainees.

Psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure, tor­ture and iso­la­tion have also begun as prac­tices against the pris­on­ers of the PKK and PAJK (Par­tiya Azadiya Jinên Kur­dis­tan), imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the attacks and repres­sion in Turk­ish Kur­dis­tan since 2015.

In Şır­nak, the cur­few was rein­stat­ed with­in 24 hours (since March 14). Detainees in T‑type pris­ons in Şır­nak launched a hunger strike, either col­lec­tive or indi­vid­ual, denounc­ing the prac­tices in the jail.

Xece declared that the pris­on­ers were still being oppressed with arbi­trary pun­ish­ments and ill treat­ments. The State is increas­ing­ly turn­ing against the pris­on­ers using war as an excuse, espe­cial­ly since last year. The slight­est demands by the pris­on­ers are viewed as dis­turb­ing the pen­i­ten­tiary admin­is­tra­tion and some pris­on­ers were placed in iso­la­tion for a year, an ille­gal practice.

Xece stressed that the oppres­sion against the PKK and PAJK pris­ons con­tin­ued to increase after the July 15 attempt­ed coup: “You would think that the coup wasn’t orga­nized by FETÖ ( Fethul­lah Gülen Orga­ni­za­tion) since they’ve increased the pres­sure on oth­er polit­i­cal pris­on­ers after the attempt­ed coup. Vis­its and phone calls have been restrict­ed and let­ters aren’t hand­ed over to sev­er­al pris­on­ers. Now the polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in sev­er­al jails have launched a hunger strike in protest. He strike is being car­ried out in dif­fi­cult con­di­tions since their state of health wor­ries us. Peo­ple should under­stand that we must defend the prisoners.”

(Beri­tan Canöz­er / Jinha)

You will have noticed that the response from the Silivri prison direc­tor reeks of sex­ism. Excus­ing tor­ture under the state of emer­gency by an over­flow of testos­terone is quite a find. When will we hear excus­es for rape?

While a decree led to the release of a num­ber of com­mon pris­on­ers fol­low­ing the coup d’état, the jails were re-occu­pied by addi­tion­al polit­i­cal pris­on­ers who were arrest­ed in vast num­bers. The demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion and the Kur­dish move­ment are on the front lines, a bar­gain for the State in the midst of arrests of so-called FETÖists.

There was also a wave of arrests of intel­lec­tu­als and jour­nal­ists, fol­lowed by par­ty mem­bers and elect­ed mem­bers of par­lia­ment. 180 were arrest­ed in the towns of Turkey and Kur­dis­tan in the past sev­en days. The major­i­ty is from the HDP and DBP (Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties), provin­cial and dis­trict co-pres­i­dents. Many of the arrests tar­get the co-pres­i­den­cy sys­tem of one man and one woman, which the AKP regime does not tol­er­ate. (The sus­pen­sion of may­ors and co-may­ors and their replace­ment by AKP admin­is­tra­tors fol­lows the same logic.)

The fresh upsurge of vio­lence against polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in the jails is not an iso­lat­ed phe­nom­e­non lim­it­ed to a few guards or local author­i­ties. Even if the State’s admin­is­tra­tive func­tion­ing has been con­sid­er­ably weak­ened by the purges, this repres­sive pol­i­cy is “jus­ti­fied” by the high­er-ups, and val­i­dat­ed by the ide­ol­o­gy pre­sid­ing over the state of emer­gency. “We must sub­due the domes­tic ene­my who has placed him­self out­side the frame­work of nation­al unity.”

One should not be sur­prised to see that patri­archy dis­plays its full poten­tial in this con­text. What is remark­able is these women’s fight­ing spir­it, also dou­bly repressed in prison.

This rein­forces us in the thought we must estab­lish dif­fer­ent forms of sup­port, by form­ing links through the bars in a sys­tem­at­ic way, and not only for a few “per­son­al­i­ties”, even if this allows us to speak about them all.

This also gives more strength to what we wrote con­cern­ing uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and teach­ers, widen­ing the resis­tance to all those direct­ly threat­ened in Turkey. Devel­op­ing exchanges, invi­ta­tions, and fos­ter pro­grams should be some of the prac­ti­cal actions in the future.

Final­ly, con­cern­ing the dan­gers weigh­ing main­ly on women (but not only, as the LGBTI could attest to), vig­i­lance is in order so that denun­ci­a­tions of aggres­sions and sex­u­al vio­lences are imme­di­ate and res­onate across Europe.

There exists asso­ci­a­tions, and non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, activists for human rights and unions here in Europe whose duty it is to seize upon these questions.

Polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Turkey should be a major preoccupation.

Con­cern­ing the esca­la­tion of vio­lence, notably against women, Read HERE for recent devel­op­ments and con­firmed cases.

Français : “La tor­ture de retour, et dans les pris­ons de femmes” Cliquez pour lire

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