07/309) Testimonies on Allegations of Torture Under Custody in Ankara After July 15 Coup Attempt…

30-Jul-2020

Erhan Doğan, a history teacher who was detained on July 24, 2016 in Ankara, following the coup attempt on July 15 that year; has statements on torture and ill-treatment that he was subjected to under custody which are covered in news reports on July 27, 2020: “When I and other colleagues were taken to Anti-Terror Department, a police chief said ‘police officers, move away’. When the police officers moved away, they started to beat us with kicks and punches. They asked the principal of the private teaching institution and when I said that was me, they took me out of others and got in a dark corridor. (…)

They took me sports hall. It was a big, closed sports complex. They made everybody wore orange t-shirts in the sports hall. There were numerous people in rows, handcuffed behind their backs and faced towards the walls. (…) There were blood marks on the walls at the level of an average human height. Later I learned that these marks were of the torture they committed against soldiers before they got us there. (…) They were reading out names and taking the specific person with the specific name read out to another place with sections.

There was the torture. They took me there the first night. (…) They were beating me, pulling my hair and hitting me to the wall, they stripped me down to my underwear, and then beat me with clubs after pouring water on me. But the scariest ones were the squad that came at nights. There was a squad coming there around 11 p.m. or at midnight and leaving there at 4 a.m. in the next morning. The torture they committed was unbearable. They put me in strappado for 2 and a half hours, arms tied behind and hanged to top. When they put me back to the ground, I thought that all my bones were broken. I could not walk. (…)

One time, while I was answering a question they asked, a heavy strike hit me from one side of my knee. My whole body was shaken with pain. I heard a sudden noise, like crash. I found out after being released that my cruciate ligaments were tore. Three of my teeth and eyeglasses were broken under torture. (…) I have had lost concept of time but probably around 11 p.m. on July 28, my name was read out. I was taken to this sectioned place. Sections were open there. While the police officers were beating me there, I saw three young women with headscarves being taken in front of the section. They were on their twenties.

They put them into the next section and started to torture them. The girls were screaming. They were torturing me at that time but I was almost neglecting it. They were cursing the girls and telling them that they were rape them. The girls were begging, ‘please do not rape us’. I understood from the noises afterwards and from crying of the girls that they raped them. It took about 45 minutes. (…) There was a room at the entrance of the sports hall. At the back of the room, at about three meters away, there was a female doctor at a desk. They were putting us into the room but the doctor was not coming near to us.

They put me in the room for medical examination. The doctor asked ‘are you okay?’, it was not difficult to see that I was tortured since I was in blood so I answered, ‘Can’t you see?’. The police officers with me said to the doctor ‘we will be back’ and took me out of the room. They beat me once again. They said, ‘you will not talk there, we will’. We went back to that room. Doctor asked again, ‘are you okay?’, and a police officer near me answered, ‘he is in perfect health’”.

Musa Kılıçaslan, former member of Gendarmerie Special Operations unit who was detained on July 16, 2016, gave his testimony and defence at the trial of the case against him at Ankara Heavy Penal Court No 23 on December 1, 2019. His testimony was covered by the news reports on July 26, 2020 and he states the following on torture and ill-treatment that he was subjected to at Ankara Security Directorate: “I was detained in the morning of July 16, with gunstocks electroshocks hitting me.

When I regained consciousness, I saw that people around were in their underwear and were being taken in busses. After being taken to a bus, I was subjected to lynch with paving stones and bars at the C Gate (of Gendarmerie General Command). (…) A police officer in the bus told us that a group of 300 police officers were standing like a corridor and waiting us at Ankara Security Directorate. We got off the bus with handcuffs behind our backs and in our underwear, only underpants. We went through that police corridor one by one, subjected to kicks, punches, and hit by clubs. I was hit at the head, ribcage, inguinal region and right leg. (…)

When I opened my eyes in a half conscious condition, I was at the sports hall of Anti-Terror Department. The ones outside were shooting at the windows of the sports hall, and they were telling that they would come in and kill us. (…) Several soldiers came to the officer on duty and asked to go the bathroom. The officer said, ‘go and do it over next to the wall’. The soldiers said ‘there are people over there, they would be covered in urine if we do so’. But they had to come next to the wall and urinate there, we were lying on the ground at that moment and all over us were covered with urine.

Our hands, faces, all over our bodies were covered with blood and urine. (…) The door opened and a person with police vest came in, introducing himself as Azrael. He told us to bend on our knees with our faces towards the walls. (…) I could not stand on my knees. This person, names himself as Azrael, came to me. He had dozens of plastic handcuffs like a whip in his hand, and was hitting me with it while saying ‘I said bend on knees’. (…) I do not recall how many days were over, 3 or 4 people took me to the infirmary. The doctor examined me there and said ‘Nothing to worry about. Your ribs are broken, and you might have had a brain trauma. The prosthesis in your leg might have been removed that is why you cannot move your leg.

I will refer you to the hospital’. (…) They referred me to the hospital and the doctor over there said ‘We should immediately intervene this’. The police implicitly threatened the doctor, saying ‘he is a traitor, it would give you some trouble to do so’. (…) The doctor who have just mentioned immediate intervention changed his mind suddenly and they took me back to the infirmary in a stretcher. (…) That evening, they took a woman in pyjamas. (…) They beat this female army officer. (…)

A police officer whose name was said to be Süleyman (…) came close to her ear and said ‘I will take you down soon. We will go over you there’ while he was hitting at the same time. (…) That police officer came in one day, he hurt his right hand. A female police officer asked him how he did so, and he said ‘I was beating someone, when I hit at the chin the cheekbone was broken and my right hand was hurt’. (…) A civilian employee of the Prime Minister’s Office were taken there.

The police officer who took him in, said that he was ‘Fuat Avni’. They took this person into the torture room. They tortured him until the next morning. I still hear his screams. They took him in the next morning and threw into the middle of the place. (…) The doctor looked at him and said ‘he could have internal bleeding; we should refer him to the hospital’. They referred him to the hospital. Another police officer came and ‘He was not Fuat Avni’, he said.”

Source: https://en.tihv.org.tr/