Forced disappearance of the regime’s opponents, torturing them in secret sites for months or killing of them are practices seen in different periods of Turkish history. Those practices which Kurds suffered in the early ’90s are now in use after a long time for the Gulen movement’s members.
CEVHERİ GÜVEN
Since the start of 2016, 29 individuals were abducted. There are still no words on the whereabouts or wellbeing of some of them and hope is already lost for them being alive.
In February of 2016, six people were abducted in a similar way: Gökhan Turkmen, Yasin Ugan, Özgür Kaya, Erkan Irmak, Salim Zeybek and Mustafa Yılmaz.
Gokhan Turkmen, Yasin Ugan, Özgür Kaya, Erkan Irmak turned up in the Anti-Terror Department of Ankara Police Headquarter after 6 months of their forced disappearance.
Remaining 2 persons, Mustafa Yılmaz and Gökhan Türkmen, were found “being turned over to police”.
Their first words: withdraw the applications lodged before International Courts
The observations of their wives, able to see them after months, are the same: They have lost extreme weight, have blanched and are scared.
They have not been allowed to see their families or lawyers alone. The visits in police custody can be made under the surveillance of police officers or the surveillance of guardian in prison, despite being against the law. Besides, more than one police officers or guardians are present during the visit. And the whole visit is filmed by video cameras.
The first things they said were the same and they sound like to be dictated:
“I don’t want a lawyer, withdraw the applications filed before international courts and institutions regarding our disappearance and tortures, give up on the complaints filed before Turkish courts, stop twitting.”
They were not allowed to see lawyers retained by their families
The formerly abducted persons were able to tell their families and lawyers about the tortures that they had experienced before being jailed. Thanks to those statements of which the Courts had been aware afterward, the secret place of the Turkish Intelligence Service has been uncovered.
This time, a different method has been followed for those last six. Officials did not let them meet their lawyers or families alone. They said they do not demand a lawyer with the memorized phrases while being in fear due to tortures they had faced for months.
Then, some “surprise” lawyers, known by neither families nor appointed by a Bar association, have appeared. No one knows who paid those lawyers either.
Those lawyers who display a nationalist profile have avoided giving information about those abductees persons to their families.
One of those lawyers is Neslihan Koçer. She insisted upon there is no torture or abduction during our conversation. According to Koçer, they had hidden in an unknown place but then they decided to turn themselves in. She claimed that she came across Ugan and Kaya in the police headquarter where she was for another business. However, she left unanswered the question of why these persons did not ask for their lawyer. Following the publication by Bold Media of her interview, she applied to a Turkish court and blocked access to Bold Medya’s website in Turkey.
Applications to International Courts
Their families showed great efforts for months following their abduction. After exhausting all domestic remedies without any result, they tried remedies in international law. The Committee on Enforced Disappearance of the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights accepted to review their applications and requested a defense from Turkey. And, one of the repeated phrases by all those 6 persons was “Withdraw your applications from international courts”. In spite of their husbands’ requests, the families are determined to maintain their applications.
Twitter is the sole place of freedom
The families, who could not have their voices heard due to censorship over Turkish media, used social media, in particular, Twitter, very efficiently.
The tweets of families racked up thousands of share and in this way, they received public attention.
Sümeyye Yılmaz, the wife of abducted physiotherapist Mustafa Yılmaz, thinks that her use of Twitter played an important role to get her husband back alive.
She said “my husband wants me to stop tweeting, does not want a lawyer and asks for withdrawal of international applications. Those cannot be my husband’s phrase, they sound like memorized phrases. I will continue my fight.”
Zehra Türkmen, the wife of Gökhan Türkmen, said “I will not withdraw my applications to international courts. I will keep up my legal fight. I will bring those (responsible for my husband’s disappearance) to account.”
Ankara Bar Association not being allowed to appoint a lawyer
Ankara Bar Association has designated a committee of lawyers to visit the 6 abducted persons. However, the administration of prison did not allow the visit despite the provisions of law expressly authorizing it.
Since the abducted persons were forced to say that they do not want to have a lawyer, the Bar association has been left unable to intervene. Turkey has never seen this level of pressure before.
Kerem Altıparmak, a human rights lawyer, summarises the situation as follows:
“People have gone missing for months. Their families have been looking for them at that time. This person turns up after months and says I was hiding. So he knows how his family’s situation is but do nothing. The person, coming out of nowhere, persistently decline his family’s and Bar association’s offer for having a lawyer. He insists upon working with a lawyer who is not known by himself or his family. The person who has been running for months suddenly become an informer and give many persons’ name away. Those persons are secretly tried by a special court. What a coincidence that the same scenario plays out for each abduction.”
Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a rights activist and an MP from the pro-minority rights Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), noted the similarities of the last abduction cases:
“Forced disappearances are the most important human rights violations. We receive reports of intense torturing in the aftermath of the abduction. They have been kidnapped and then turned up in police custody. In the latest cases, none of the abducted persons want to speak in police custody. Their wives believe that their husbands were forced to speak against their will. The same story goes for Gökhan Türkmen, the very last to be found, and all the other five persons; they have lost weight, their skin has got white due to lack of sunlight and been asking for the withdrawal of applications filled to international courts. All the cases are the same.”
A special court
The special court, referred to by Kerem Altınparmak, is Ankara 34th Heavy Penal Court. It is also known as “MİT (Turkish Intelligence Office) Mahkemesi” by the public. The cases in which MİT takes interest will be judged by this special court in September 2019. This is a kind of a court special to MİT.
Four of them were brought to this court on 24 and 25 September for the first time. CHP lawmaker Sezgin Tanrıkılu, a prominent human rights activist, went to the Ankara Court House to observe the first trial.
He describes what he has seen as “I searched the courthouse with the families for two hours to find in which hearing room Salim Zeybek and Özgür Kaya’s trial is being held. No official in the courthouse gave us information regarding the place of trial. The hearing room of 34th Heavy Penal Court was empty. A secret trial is being conducted and this is against the law.”
Torture Center
The 6 persons, after missing for months, are not being let to choose their lawyers, to meet their families alone and been tried secretly. They are even isolated in their prison cells. Thus, they could not find an occasion to talk about the tortures they underwent when they were missing.
However, Ayten Öztürk and Zabit Kişi, apart from those 6 persons, had the occasion of telling the tortures they experienced in MİT’s torture center called “Çiftlik” in Ankara.
They were able to describe, both orally and written, what they had gone through.
Ayten Öztürk
Here are some of the things that Ayten Öztürk experienced:
“I was taken blindfolded to the torture room. They were first undressing me and handcuffing me in a hanging position to iron rings on the wall. They were pressing an electric shock device on all over my naked body. When they did this, my whole body was shaking and I was screaming at the top of my voice. They kept doing it until I passed out. Marks, looking like holes, were appearing on every part of my body where they applied the taser. Marks in which there are 2 cm gaps between its edges. When I was sent to a prison, my fellow inmates counted my marks of which there are 898. When I was about to pass out, they were taking me to a bathroom and continue torturing with high-pressure water. Sometimes they were doing waterboarding for hours. While one was spraying high-pressure water, another one was holding me to fill the sack on my head with water. They used the shock device also while waterboarding me. And sometimes they were taking the sack off, opening my eyes and pouring the water in my nose.
Moving was impossible in the place called “coffin”. In the cell, though, there was beaten, threat and swears on every occasion. They hit me in the head and face very harshly more than twice. They were doing this until my mouth and nose were covered with blood and got bruised. I was also given an electric shock through my little fingers and big toes. They wrapped a metal ring around my fingers and gave the shock by using a remote control. I passed out a few times so that I could not stand on my feet. When they stopped giving an electric shock, they were harassing all my body with their fingers and sticks. They were trying to thrust the stick into my genital area.”
Zabit Kişi
Zabit Kişi also revealed in the (court) hearing his experiences of the torture center where he remained 103 days :
“Once I got there, they undressed me. I am not able to talk about the harassment and dirty talks that I witnessed. Two persons held me by my arms and hit me on a kind of wall. They gave electric shocks of which they sometimes increased the voltage to different parts of my body starting from the top of it. When I was in sitting position, they turned the sole of my feet upwards and crashed my fingers one by one. One month later my fingers started recovering and some of my nails came back. While I was sitting handcuffed behind the back, they stepped onto the handcuffs.
For a few days, I struggled to hold a spoon to eat the food they gave me. I had to take pills in prison due to the loss of sensation in my fingers and nerve damages.
They threatened to rape me when I was naked and they attempted to do it with a hard object. They repeated this despite my begs.
As I was sitting, two persons held me by arms and hit me in the back, my ribs got cracked. I suffered a lot each time I breathed due to the pressure of ribs on my lung. They were asking me to answer aloud, even though there was a sack on my head. To do that, I was taking deep and fast breathes through my mouth and because of that I experienced a respiratory problem and heartthrob.
The torture team was changing but the torture was going on.”
Zabit Kişi and Ayten Öztürk were not even permitted by the courts to see doctors despite revealing the torture they went through. No probes were launched over the torture allegations.