The new Turkey
Cemal Aslan

2-apr-19

In another case examined by Human Rights Watch, three men allege they were tortured in police custody, after being detained on suspicion of involvement in a mortar attack on a police station. Photos posted on Twitter on June 9 showed the three men beaten up with bleeding faces. The photos appeared in pro-government media and were tweeted by
journalist Fatih Tezcan, with the claim that the men were responsible for a mortar attack on the police headquarters in the town of Gevaş, in the eastern province of Van, by the armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).16

Those in the photos were later identified as three local men from Van city, who said their vehicle had been forcibly taken from them by members of the PKK. The three men alleged it was taken as they were returning from a trip to the high mountain pastures near Gevaş to collect mushrooms.17 The authorities say the vehicle was used by the PKK in a mortar attack. The three men are Cemal Aslan, Abdulselam Aslan, and Halil Aslan. Human Rights Watch interviewed one of the men, Cemal Aslan, 52, owner of a public bath (hamam) in Van:

After they [the PKK members] took the van from us and a couple of them held us for a few hours in a cave in the mountains, taking our mobile phones off us, they released us, and we went on our way in our van. We didn't know that it had been used in an attack, and we were planning to complain to the police about the fact they had held us like that for hours and had taken our van and phones. We didn't get our phones back. We entered the town of Gevaş, and two Panzer armoured vehicles were waiting there, and the police stopped us and ordered us out of the van, stripped and then brutally beat us in the road. Then we were taken to the Gevaş police station and the beating continued endlessly although we kept saying we were civilians.

They beat us in a toilet and took photos of us. I've really never seen anything like it in my life. We were handcuffed from behind, then punched, kicked, hit with rifle butts in the back and humiliated from nine at night to four in the morning, with police officers constantly asking us where our weapons were, and trying to make us confess to the attack on the station. When we were examined by a doctor the police told her we had fallen from a car. We were in no state to talk at that point. Once we were transferred to the anti-terror branch in Edremit, the torture stopped completely. We spent
six days there and the court released us, putting an overseas travel ban on us, and with a judicial control on us, which means we have to sign into the police station once a week.

Neither the prosecutor nor the court asked us a single question about the state we were in. A doctor in the Van regional research hospital forensic medicine department documented our injuries in a very detailed report. I have been unable to sleep at night ever since this happened and am in shock.18

Cemal Aslan's wife informed Human Rights Watch that the family had been extremely worried when her husband and his cousins had not returned from the trip to collect mushrooms. They had complained to the police that they were missing and were shocked when the first news they received of the three were the photos circulating on social media.19 The three men lodged a formal complaint against the Gevaş police on June 21, 2017.20 Their lawyer informed Human Rights Watch that the prosecutor has requested security camera footage from the police station where the torture allegedly took place, but there have been no further developments in the investigation of the complaint.21

Source:HRW, In Custody Police Torture and Abductions in Turkey