“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.

“According to the findings of the TİHV Documentation Center, at least 142 people were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in official places of detention in 2021.

“In the first five months of 2022, at least 215 people were subjected to torture or other forms of ill treatment. According to the findings of the İHD Documentation Office in 2021, two people died suspiciously while in custody, and one person was injured.”

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In some cases, severe torture has led to the deaths of the victims. Reports of Kurdish political prisoners being tortured and forced to attempt suicide by around 60 guards at an Constantinople prison in early April, has once again shaken the Kurdish community in Turkey.

The news was initially based on information transmitted by prisoners to their families during phone calls. Then an audio recording of a prisoner graphically described the torture and pressure to commit suicide to escape the torture. After news of prisoners attempting mass suicide and being taken to hospital became public, Turkey’s General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Centers denied the allegations in a statement on April 9.

The death, however, of Ferhan Yılmaz, one of the prisoners taken to hospital, brought to light more facts concerning Turkey’s prisons.

Read more: Gatestone Institute