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** Turkey: Torture Has Reached "Unprecedented Levels" ([link removed])
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by Uzay Bulut • July 27, 2022 at 5:00 am
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* "We saw his body while washing it. There was a scar on his neck as if he had been hanged with a clothesline. Both of his eyes had burst. Blood was coming from his eyes. His nose was completely broken and filled with cotton. There was such a large swelling and bruise on his chest it looked as if a tree had been stuck there. His upper lip was almost as big as a palm. His right foot was stitched." — Hikmet Yılmaz, elder brother of Ferhan Yılmaz, evidently tortured to death in Silivri prison on April 10, 2022.
* "There are thousands of cases like this. I spoke to his brother a while ago.... There is ill-treatment and torture in all prisons, systematically everywhere." — Sezgin Tanrıkulu, deputy of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), bianet.com. July 14, 2022.
* "[W]e learned that the transferred prisoners told their families, 'We are at risk here too. Do not make any more statements to the press.'" — Monitoring Delegation of Prisons in the Marmara Region, press conference, tihv.org.tr, April 15, 2022.
* "Both of his hands have cuts and stitches.... His whole body is bruised.... He can't see any more. They tortured him so much he has lost his eyesight. They hit him so much in the head that his head shakes all the time. His eyes start moving as if he had a stroke.... He has seven stitches on one arm and six on the other...They put him in a cell where there was feces of other prisoners. They told him to eat the feces. They beat my son and hanged him twice. And then removed him from the rope. He also hanged himself once... He said they made him do it... They put a razor blade there and told him to cut himself. They waited there so he had to cut himself." — Beyaz Çelik, mother of prisoner Halil Kasal, who was tortured at Silivri Prison.
* "I emphasize that there is no torture or ill-treatment in Turkish prisons... Almost all of the allegations against prisons are exaggeration, distortion and fiction... Such allegations were made by terrorist organizations, circles that support terrorist organizations or those who support them politically." — Turkey's Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ, t24.com.tr, April 20, 2022.
* "Prisoners are under torture. There are massive violations of rights. Prisoners die, they are killed, but [authorities] say that they committed suicide." — Fatma Kurtulan, MP of the HDP party and member of the Parliamentary Human Rights Investigation Commission, Yeni Yasam Gazetesi, April 20, 2022.
* "[S]ometimes the prison guards show counter-reflexes by complaining about the prisoners that they abuse, and the prisoners get arbitrarily and illegally punished for the abuses from which they have suffered.... These incidents are due to sentences arbitrarily and unlawfully implemented in Turkey, and the widespread impunity policy for state authorities who are perpetrators of crimes." — Mehdi Ozdemir, attorney, board member of Diyarbakir Bar Association, to Gatestone, April 23, 2022.
* What makes this situation even worse is that the international community, including the UN, has enabled the Turkish government to carry out its policy of destruction of human rights with no consequences, but many rewards.

Turkey's policy of dealing with political prisoners -- particularly its Kurdish citizens -- has for decades been tyrannizing them through murder, arrests and torture. Pictured: The Silivri Prison and Courthouse complex in Silivri, near Istanbul on February 18, 2020. (Photo by Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images)

"Torture," read a joint statement by Turkey's Human Rights Association (İHD) and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TİHV) "is still Turkey's most important problem... Torture and other forms of ill-treatment in the streets and open areas, as well as in unofficial places of detention, have reached unprecedented levels in Turkey."

According to the data shared by the two human rights organizations on June 26, the UN's International Day in Support of Victims of Torture:

"984 people in 2021 and 380 people in the first 5 months of 2022 sought help from TIHV on the grounds that they were subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

"According to the findings of the İHD Documentation Office, 531 people were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in official places of detention last year.

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