74
Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
Amnesty International September 2001
Turkish law and international standards.
Torture still widespread
In the first half of 2001 AI continued to receive reports
on torture and ill-treatment from different parts of the
country. On a mission to Turkey in June, the AI
delegates interviewed torture victims and their
lawyers throughout the country and obtained
numerous reports and documents on torture and ill-
treatment. The victims included people suspected of
protests against the F-Type prisons, pro-Kurdish,
Islamist or leftist activities, corruption or criminal
offences. Some of the alleged victims were women
and children. In Turkey, torture mainly occurs in the
first days in police or gendarmerie custody, when the
detainees are held without any contact to the outside
world. Detainees are routinely blindfolded during
interrogations, some of them throughout the police
detention. Other methods of torture and ill-treatment
regularly reported include heavy beating, being
stripped naked, sexual abuse, death and rape threats,
other psychological torture, and deprivation of sleep,
food, drink and use of the toilet. Some detainees are
also exposed to electric shocks, hanging by the arms,
spraying with cold pressurized water and falaka
(beating of the soles of the feet). Reports about ill-
treatment in the F-Type prisons are difficult to check
because of the restricted access to these prisons. In
addition AI has increasingly received reports about the
use of excessive force during mass arrests, torture with
the aim to recruit informers and, in the case of
suspected members of the Islamist armed group
Hizbullah, prolonged police detention for several
weeks or months. Although some legal changes were
initiated, no actual measures were taken in the first
half of 2001 to reinforce the fight against torture.
In Diyarbak
r numerous people were arrested in
early February, probably in relation with expected
protests on the occasion of the anniversary of the
arrest of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the armed
opposition group Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
two years ago. One of them was 28-year-old
Abdulselam Bayram. His detention on 11 February
was reportedly unacknowledged for several days.
After a previous request was rejected, Abdulselam
Bayram was visited by lawyers from the Human
Rights Association (IHD) at Diyarbak
r Police
Headquarters on 17 February. The meeting was
observed by security forces and lasted 10 minutes.
Abdulselam Bayram reported that for seven days he
was taken to the interrogation room every day; he was
blindfolded, subjected to electric shocks, heavily
beaten, hung by the arms, and sprayed with
pressurised water. He also reported food deprivation.
As a result of the torture he reported a severe pain in
his chest. In addition, due to the hanging, his arms
became numb. The lawyers observed that Abdulselam
Bayram’s body and hands were shaking, and he
seemed exhausted. The wet state of his hair
strengthened the impression that he was subjected to
pressurised water. The lawyers also observed signs of
psychological torture. In the first session of a trial in
which he is charged with PKK membership,
Abdulselam Bayram said that his police statements
were taken under pressure. AI is not aware of any
investigations into his torture allegations.
Even children become victims of torture and ill-
treatment. If they are arrested under suspicion of
offences which fall under the jurisdiction of State
Security Courts they are treated like adults and are
deprived of special safeguards. In the southeastern
town of Viran
ehir in the province of Urfa twenty-
nine young people, among them 24 children, were
arrested on 8 January, accused of chanting slogans for
the PKK. They were allegedly beaten and ill-treated,
and detained in cruel, inhuman or degrading
conditions. They were reportedly forced to stand for
two or three hours with their faces to the wall and their
hands above their heads, and were not allowed to look
around or speak. They were also threatened and
verbally abused. None was given access to a lawyer.
The police reportedly made them sign documents,
which none of them fully understood and at least some
could not read. Later all but one were remanded to
prison. Thirteen of them have been put on trial, and six
of them remained in prison until 15 February 2001 at
the end of the first trial hearing. It appears that the
children may have been arrested and prosecuted solely
on the basis of their ethnic identity, and that the main
evidence
against
them
are
allegations
and
"confessions" which might have been elicited under
ill-treatment or coercion.
Rape and sexual assault by members of the
security forces continued to be reported. During
incommunicado detention in police or gendarmerie
custody women and men were routinely stripped
naked. Methods of sexual abuse reported included
electro-shocks, beating on the genitals and women’s
breasts, squeezing the testicles and rape. After a 1
st
May demonstration several young women were taken
into the custody of police headquarters in Izmir, a city
on the west coast. Two of them gave similar reports to
AI about the horror used to recruit them as informers
on leftist circles: in the middle of the night each one
of them was brought to a separate room where each
was blindfolded, beaten, stripped naked and sexually
abused. Subsequently both women were raped by
police officers in these separate rooms. The women
were released on the following day without having
seen a prosecutor or a judge.
People suspected of criminal offences have also
been tortured. In three villages and the small town of
Sivasl
in the western province of U
ak 11 people
were arrested from their homes by gendarmerie in the
night of 23 and 24 January. The arrest was based on
an anonymous complaint that they had stolen sheep
five years ago. In spite of this the local prosecutor
gave permission to hold them in detention for four
days. On 27 January they were released by a
prosecutor. The men reported that they were
blindfolded and handcuffed from the moment of their
arrest. During transport and at the gendarmerie station
they were heavily beaten and forced to sit on a very
cold concrete floor having been stripped off their
trousers and slips. Two of them also reported that they
had been exposed to falaka, one squeezing of his
testicles, another one squeezing of his penis. They