An Ankara lawyer told Human Rights Watch that his client, a detained teacher, agreed to confess to accusations leveled against him after police threatened to bring his wife to the police station and rape her.
In a 43-page report, “A Blank Check: Turkey’s Post-Coup Suspension of Safeguards Against Torture,” published on Tuesday, HRW documented 13 specific abuse incidents concerning Turkey’s post-coup detainees. The alleged abuse cases ranged from use of stress positions and sleep deprivation to severe beatings, sexual abuse and the threat of rape.
HRW said it had interviewed more than 40 lawyers, human rights activists, former detainees, medical personnel and forensic specialists before preparing the report.
The watchdog said Turkey’s post-coup emergency decrees facilitated torture as they removed safeguards against ill-treatment.
What follows is the full text of the ninth abusive incident in the series published by HRW on Tuesday.
“An Ankara-based lawyer told Human Rights Watch that when he met with a client, an unemployed teacher who was detained around July 25 on suspicion of having links to the Gülen movement, but was now in pretrial prison detention, the client told him that police had abused both him and a friend.
According to the lawyer, the client said that the police had first detained his friend and then tortured the friend who informed on him. After the police brought his client to the police station, they also severely beat him, the lawyer said. When the police threatened to bring the client’s wife to the police station to rape her, he agreed to confess to their accusations. When he accepted, the police brought in a different legal aid lawyer to record his confession in his presence. The client told his lawyer that when he refused, the police again threatened to rape his wife and in the end the client confessed to the accusations.
The client, who saw his medical report although the lawyer didn’t, told the lawyer that a doctor had examined him in the police station, but that the medical report said that he was fine.” (Turkey Purge)