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Cases of human rights violations in Turkey in December included 43 deaths and 240 incidents of torture and maltreatment, with 143 of them taking place in prisons, a report drafted by Sezgin Tanrıkulu, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), revealed on Friday.

The report by Tanrıkulu, a prominent human rights activist and deputy chair of a parliamentary committee on human rights, said 23 women, two refugees and an inmate were among those whose right to life was violated last month.

Regarding violations of freedom of speech, the MP’s monthly report showed that investigations were launched into two members of the press, while eight journalists were detained and nine more were either given prison sentences or fines.

Turkish authorities in December blocked access to a total of 1,342 URLs, which included links to critical media outlets such as the T24, Diken and Gazete Duvar news websites and the Cumhuriyet daily website.

Thirteen people were detained, two were arrested and five were either given prison sentences or levied fines due to expressing their views critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

The authorities launched investigations into 35 social media users, detained 13 and arrested one in December, while the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement on Dec. 22 that social media posts mentioning strip-searches in Turkey’s prisons were also being investigated.

Allegations of strip-search in Turkish prisons and detention centers were first brought to public attention by Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a prominent human rights activist and lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), over a report that 30 female students who were detained in Uşak on alleged terror links were strip-searched before admission to a detention facility in late August.

Following the move, which prompted scores of women as well as men to share on social media their experiences of strip-searches, several senior members of the AKP government denied the practice and branded Gergerlioğlu a “terrorist.”

The report further revealed that hundreds of political party, municipality and nongovernmental organization chairs and members, the majority of them from the pro-Kurdish HDP, were detained, and at least 13 were arrested last month. Five of them received prison sentences in December, while three others were released by a court.

Turkish police intervened in at least 18 demonstrations, public press statements and assemblies last month, detaining at least 85 people and arresting two among those who attended the events. At least three similar events were banned by provincial and district governors’ offices, and a number of people were reportedly sentenced to pay administrative fines for attending protests during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two Turkish teachers who were detained in the Ukrainian city of Rava-Ruska on New Year’s Day have been deported to Turkey by Ukrainian authorities despite anger on social media against their potential removal, according to a statement from the Turkish Interior Ministry on Wednesday.

The reaction on social media was due to the fact that the teachers, who were working at schools in Iraq affiliated with the Gülen movement, a faith-based group accused by the Turkish government of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016 despite a strong denial from the movement, would most certainly face persecution in Turkey.

The teachers, Salih Fidan and Samet Güre, traveled to Kyiv 51 days ago to make their way to Europe to seek asylum because their Turkish passports were about to expire and they feared Turkish authorities would not renew them. They recently went to Rava-Ruska near Lviv, close to the Polish border, where they were detained by Ukrainian police on Dec. 31 among a crowd of people celebrating the new year. They were accused of entering Ukraine illegally despite the fact that the teachers entered the country with legal travel documents, according to a report on the ukraynahaber news website, which had interviewed the two teachers.

The teachers had to file asylum applications at the Ukrainian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to avoid their deportation but were deported before the asylum process was completed after Turkish Embassy officials in Kyiv reportedly took action to facilitate their return to Turkey. Despite the anger on social media, the teachers were forced to board a plane to İstanbul on the evening of Jan. 5 and were flown to Turkey.

According to a statement from the Turkish Interior Ministry on Wednesday morning, the teachers are being questioned at the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office’s terror crimes department.

They are accused of depositing money in Bank Asya, a now-closed Islamic lender affiliated with the Gülen movement, following the corruption investigations of 2013 in which the inner circle of then Prime Minister and current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was implicated.

Following these investigations, called a “coup attempt” by Erdoğan and his government, a crackdown was launched on Gülen movement members that culminated with the coup attempt of 2016. The Gülen movement denies any involvement in the corruption investigations as well.

The names of the teachers were also reportedly mentioned in the depositions of some people who were prosecuted on terrorism charges due to their alleged Gülen links and wanted to benefit from the so-called “effective repentance” law.

Since the coup attempt, followers of the Gülen movement have been subjected to a massive crackdown, with the Turkish government and pro-government media outlets demonizing its members.

According to a statement from Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Nov. 26, a total of 292,000 people have been detained while 96,000 others have been jailed due to alleged links to the Gülen movement since the failed coup. The minister said there are currently 25,655 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to links to the Gülen movement.

In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.

A new allegation of enforced disappearance in Turkey emerged at the beginning of 2021 as Hüseyin Galip Küçüközyiğit, a former civil servant dismissed from his job due to alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, was reported missing.

His daughter, Nursena Küçüközyiğit, has been trying to lodge a criminal complaint saying he was abducted on Dec. 29. However, authorities in the northwestern city of Kocaeli, notably the public prosecutor’s office and the police department, did not receive the complaint, according to a report by Bold Medya.

Küçüközyiğit was one of some 130,000 people purged from the civil service after an abortive military coup in July 2016 for their purported ties to the Gülen group, which the Turkish government accused of having orchestrated the failed putsch.

The disappearance

Küçüközyiğit last spoke by phone to his daughter Nursena on Dec. 29 at around 3:30 p.m. about their new year’s plans. His coworkers were the last people to have seen him. About 4 p.m. he left his colleagues to visit a friend in Ankara’s Gölbaşı district, taking off from an office facing the Maltepe Mosque in a Mazda 323 with license plate 34 FNF 28. His cell phone stopped receiving signals at 4:23 pm.

Nursena Küçüközyiğit says her father was unemployed for a long time after being expelled from public service and was held in detention for six months for his alleged Gülen links. After he was released, he set up a business to offer legal advice to other purged public sector workers, which Nursena believes might have been the reason her father was abducted.

‘Black Transporter incidents’

Post-coup enforced disappearances are known in Turkey as “Black Transporter incidents,” referring to the black Volkswagen Transporter vans that were involved in many of the cases in which there were eyewitnesses or family members managed to acquire security camera footage of the abductions.

According to opposition MP and prominent human rights defender Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, enforced disappearances are the most concerning human rights violations that have occurred since the failed coup, convinced by the accounts given by some of the victims who resurfaced months after they went missing. Some have spoken out in court, recounting the systematic and severe torture they were subjected to during their secret interrogation by the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), Turkey’s main intelligence agency, which victims said waited until their wounds had healed to hand them over to the police. Of nearly 30 people abducted since the attempted coup, three remain unaccounted for.

Nursena thinks her father was yet another victim of the notorious black vans and is worried that he might be tortured for months. She says they have filed criminal complaints with the police and the prosecutor’s office and that they will also notify the Human Rights Association (İHD), the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights. Nursena insists that her father has a brilliant career and that he has done nothing wrong.

Nursena launched the Twitter account @NeredeBabam (Where is my father) on which she started to campaign about her father’s disappearance. She says she had heard her father talk about abducted individuals in the past and that she cannot even stand reading about the gruesome experiences of those who disappeared.

Police silent

Nursena says they have repeatedly called the police, who simply say, “We are unable to provide any information.” Families of other victims were also faced with the same attitude by the police, who were reluctant to investigate and collect evidence. Relatives of Yusuf Bilge Tunç, another former civil servant who was reported missing in August 2019, had tried unsuccessfully for three months to have the authorities conduct a fingerprint search on Tunç’s vehicle. The United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances in its reports emphasized that the Turkish authorities were not pursuing the necessary investigative tracks.

Exiled journalist Can Dündar interprets the officials’ silence as proof of the state’s involvement. “They are silent because they are unable to say ‘We did it’,” Dündar says.

A promising bureaucrat

Küçüközyiğit is a graduate of one of the country’s most prestigious law schools, at Ankara University. He also holds a master’s degree from Germany and after his studies was appointed as European Union coordinator at the Turkish National Agency. He was a legal adviser for the then-prime ministry when he was removed from his job in August 2016.

The ranch: MİT’s torture center

According to the testimony of some of the victims, the abductees are being taken to the MİT’s special operations center known as “the ranch” (çiftlik in Turkish). In 2016 and 2017, some of the victims were first held at MİT’s headquarters in the Yenimahalle district of Ankara before they were transferred to the ranch. The secret interrogation center was rebuilt shortly before the July 2016 coup attempt, and reports said Gülen-linked abductees as well as Kurds brought from Syria were being interrogated under torture there.

Victims Ayten Öztürk and Zabit Kişi, who were abducted from abroad, were taken to a different location by MİT’s external operations unit. In a MİT-operated sports complex called the Saray Facilities, which is located on road to Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport, Öztürk and Kişi were subjected to severe torture.

In addition to Öztürk and Kişi, Gökhan Türkmen, Yasin Ugan, Mesut Geçer, Önder Asan and Ümit Horzum also recounted in court their months-long brutal interrogation.

Abductees

While the victims often remained unheard from for months, some were ultimately handed over to the police. Some of the abductees remain missing. Sunay Elmas, Ayhan Oran and Yusuf Bilge Tunç are still unaccounted for. Hüseyin Galip Küçüközyiğit now has been added to the list.

 

Full list

Sunay Elmas – January 27, 2016

Ayhan Oran – November 1, 2016

Mustafa Özgür Gültekin – December 21, 2016

Durmuş Ali Çetin – May 17, 2017

Hüseyin Kötüce – February 28, 2017

Mesut Geçer – March 26, 2017

Turgut Çapan – March 31, 2017

Önder Asan – April 1, 2017

Cengiz Usta – April 4, 2017

Mustafa Özben – May 9, 2017

Fatih Kılıç – May 14, 2017

Cemil Koçak – June 5, 2017

Murat Okumuş – June 16, 2017

Enver Kılıç – September 30, 2017

Zabit Kişi – September 30, 2017

Hıdır Çelik – December 6, 2017

Ümit Horzm – December 6, 2017

Ayten Öztürk – March 13, 2018

Orçun Şenyücel – April 21, 2018

Hasan Kala – July 20, 2018

Fahri Mert – August 12, 2018

Ahmet Ertürk – November 16, 2018

Gökhan Türkmen – February 7, 2019

Yasin Ugan – February 12, 2019

Özgür Kaya – February 12, 2019

Erkan Irmak – February 16, 2019

Mustafa Yılmaz – February 18, 2019

Salim Zeybek – February 20, 2019

Yusuf Bilge Tunç – August 6, 2019

Hüseyin Galip Küçüközyiğit – December 29, 2020

Nesibe Baransu, the wife of Turkish journalist Mehmet Baransu, who has been behind bars for more than five years, on Tuesday told the Jailed Journos online platform about the difficulties she faced in the years following her husband’s arrest due to being considered “legally disabled” — a term indicating that she is unable to exercise her rights as a citizen — by the Turkish government.

Baransu said she was unable to pay six months of taxes when her house was seized by the government because the workers at the tax office considered her legally disabled. She added that her being considered legally disabled at different government offices because of her husband’s arrest in 2015 had continued for four years.

“The officers [at the tax office] told me they saw a red warning on the computer screen, sent from the Justice Ministry, when they put my ID number in the system, telling them those officers who allow me to conduct an official procedure there would face legal action,” she said.

“When I asked them, ‘Is there a criminal investigation into me?’ they replied that there wasn’t. I asked, ‘Then, why am I legally disabled?’ and they said that it was because of my husband’s situation. But is there any reason for it? No, there isn’t,” Baransu said.

“People who have family members behind bars feel as if they are also jailed in a semi-open prison. I’m one of those who feel this way because of the fact that I can’t work even though I have a profession,” Baransu told Jailed Journos.

She further said that she was unable to get health insurance when she was experiencing health problems.

“I can’t understand why I can’t benefit from a service provided by the government when I am as much a citizen of this country as anybody else. I’m not under arrest, I haven’t been convicted of any crime and there isn’t any investigation or charges against me,” the journalist’s wife said.

Criticizing the lack of judicial independence in Turkey, Baransu said the court on several occasions rejected evidence that might help to prove her husband’s innocence, also refusing to hear to her statement about irregularities in her husband’s indictment.

Mehmet Baransu, who was arrested in March 2015, was sentenced to 19 years, six months on four counts over his 2013 reporting for the Taraf daily on alleged customs fraud involving the import of genetically modified rice by a pro-government businessman, which he claimed was hushed up by then-Prime Minister and current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In November, he was also sentenced to 17 years, one month on four other charges due to his report in 2013 on a National Security Council (MGK) decision concerning government plans to eliminate the faith-based Gülen movement, which is labeled as a terrorist organization by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

Ankara also accuses the movement, inspired by the teachings of the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, of masterminding a 2016 coup attempt despite both Gülen and his supporters’ strong denial of any involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activities.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been criticized by scores of social media users and a number of opposition figures for remarks implying that Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) displays its members who wear headscarves like mannequins for political gain.

The president on Friday slammed former culture minister and current CHP lawmaker Fikri Sağlar, who had said he feels uncomfortable seeing female judges wearing headscarves in court.

The party’s spokesman clarified that Sağlar’s views do not represent their official stance, and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the CHP’s chairman, also rejected Sağlar’s views, saying the CHP is not interested in how women dress in their daily lives, at work or even in the courtroom.

“Displaying some headscarved women like mannequins in order to get [more] votes in some places can’t deceive anyone anymore, that’s over. We have many members wearing headscarves in parliament now. Don’t you see it, Mr. Fikri? The situation is improving and you’re out of touch,” were Erdoğan’s remarks that sparked outrage among the public.

In response to Erdoğan, Kılıçdaroğlu emphasized that he should apologize to all women who wear headscarves for likening some of them to mannequins.

“There cannot be a grosser insult than this for a woman. What do you mean by calling them mannequins? It’s alright when they [headscarved women] are members of his party, but they are ‘mannequins’ if they are members of other parties. Does this make any sense? Why don’t you shut up and stop insulting people,” the CHP leader said.

A large number of Twitter users also criticized the president for likening women to mannequins and shared posts under the hashtag #ÖzürDileErdoğan (Apologize Erdoğan).

“A total of 386 women were murdered in our country in the past year. Just do your job and ensure women’s safety instead of shamelessly insulting them,” Meral Akşener, leader of opposition İYİ (Good) Party tweeted.

Sevgi Kılıç, one of the CHP’s headscarved Party Assembly members, said she “vehemently condemned” Erdoğan insulting a group of women that includes her.

“Doing politics by using women’s clothing is weak. No woman is a display item, whether she wears a scarf or not,”  Birol Aydın, the spokesperson of Turkey’s Islamist opposition Felicity Party (SP), told the Anka news agency, adding that the country’s main problem is the hardship women have been facing, not what they wear.

Future Party (GP) spokesman Serkan Özcan also spoke to Anka about Erdoğan’s remarks, saying that describing a headscarved woman as a mannequin was “heartless.”

“The ideology that aims to polarize people about everything is now trying to polarize headscarved women. This situation hints at the difficult situation they are currently in,” Özcan added, referring to Erdoğan and his government.

The Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) pledged to remove the ban on the wearing of headscarves in all spheres when it came to power in 2002 since civil servants and students were prohibited from wearing headscarves. There is now complete headscarf freedom in the country.

Erdoğan’s AKP government has been criticized by many for abusing the values and symbols of Islam for political gain.turkishminute

A deputy from Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), stated during budget talks that criticizing the Directorate of Religious Affairs amounts to providing support for what he called “crusaders,” in reference to a destructive, anti-Muslim mentality.

According to a report by the Birgün daily on Thursday, MHP Deputy Chairman Yaşar Yıldırım commented on criticism directed at Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate by opposition figures, saying that criticizing “the most important institution in the fight against the crusaders” amounts to showing support for them.

“That said, of course, the directorate has some shortcomings. Everybody in it, from the directorate president to the individual imams, should be careful about their behavior and attitude. This is because they represent Islam and Muslims everywhere they go,” Yıldırım added.

Yıldırım’s remarks came after Burak Erbay, an MP from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), reminded lawmakers that Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate has a budget of TL 13 billion ($1.6 billion), which is higher than that of seven ministries.

“Pfizer, which operates in 175 countries, has around 96,000 employees and BioNtech has 300,000. The Religious Affairs Directorate, on the other hand, has 131,789 employees,” Erbay added, comparing the directorate’s expenditures on employees to the well-known pharma companies.

The opposition MP also referred to the TL 90 million ($11.6 million) Harput Islamic-Ottoman social complex currently being built in eastern Elazığ province, asking why Turkey needs such a complex while the construction of houses for people who lost their homes in earthquakes has not yet been finished.

Erbay also mentioned an expertise center built by the directorate for TL 40 million ($5.1 million). “It has a [Turkish] bath and a steam room. You allocated TL 2.7 million ($348,000) just for the landscaping.”

The directorate has been criticized a number of times by opposition figures for its extravagant spending that contradicts Islam, which promotes modesty.

It has also attracted criticism for following mainstream Hanafi Sunni Islam and being “indifferent to the diversity of Turkish Islam” and for mixing religion with politics and openly supporting the policies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) over the past few years.

In the wake of outrage on social media over strip-searches in Turkey’s prisons and detention centers, ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy group chairperson Özlem Zengin strongly denied the allegations and accused a deputy who brought them to the floor of parliament of terrorizing the legislature.

Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, also a prominent human rights activist, has been raising claims in parliament about strip-searches, saying the AKP government, which came to power demanding freedom for Muslim women to wear headscarves, is now telling women to take off their underwear.

“I have never believed in the existence of strip-searches in Turkey. There simply is no such thing,” Zengin said in an interview with Euronews Turkish service on Thursday.

A social media campaign denouncing strip-searches has been ongoing on Twitter, with many people, women as well as men, relating experiences of strip-searches during detention or imprisonment.

“Don’t stay silent against strip-search” was widely shared with the Turkish hashtag #CiplakAramayaSessizKalma by activists and women who were subjected to harassment in prisons or police custody. The social media campaign was launched to raise awareness about increasing reports of sexual violence in prisons towards inmates, detainees and also inmates’ family members.

Zengin said Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has already responded to the allegations in parliament, accusing Gergerlioğlu of using “Fetö” tactics and terrorizing the parliament, by raising such claims.

Fetö is a term coined by the Turkish government to refer to the faith-based Gülen movement as a terrorist organization as the AKP government accuses the movement of masterminding a failed coup in Turkey. The movement strongly denies any involvement in the failed coup and any acts of terrorism.

“How on earth could this happen? And they are talking about religious women [as having been subjected to strip-searches]? I’m a person who has devoted her entire life to women’s rights. Can we tolerate the search of a woman in such a way? There must be some reason,” said Zengin.

Since the coup attempt, followers of the Gülen movement have been the subjects of a massive crackdown in Turkey, with the Turkish government and pro-government media outlets demonizing its members.

According to a statement from Turkish Interior Minister Soylu on Nov. 26, a total of 292,000 people have been detained while 96,000 others have been jailed due to alleged links to the Gülen movement since the failed coup. The minister said there are currently 25,655 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to ties to the Gülen movement.

The women who were subjected to strip-searches are mostly those who have been detained or arrested on charges of terrorism due to their alleged affiliation with the Gülen movement. They include teachers, doctors and housewives who worked at Gülen-linked organizations or subscribed to a newspaper connected to the movement or made donations to a Gülen-affiliated relief organization, which are all considered evidence of Gülen movement membership, hence terrorism, by Turkish authorities.

Gergerlioğlu frequently raises the human rights violations experienced by various groups.

The most recent report of a strip-search he brought to public attention took place in the Aegean province of Uşak, where a group of female students who were detained due to alleged links to the Gülen movement were strip-searched before admission to a detention facility in late August.

Gergerlioğlu said the young women were still psychologically scarred from the experience as they were subjected to humiliating strip-searches during which the guards were laughing at them.

Since Zengin’s denial of strip-searches in Turkey’s prisons and detention centers, more and more women have shared videos on social media in which they related their experiences of strip-searches and how difficult it was for them to live with the trauma they inflicted.