A Turkish court has handed down suspended sentences to two female police officers for conducting an unlawful strip-search of prominent architect Mücella Yapıcı and her daughter when they were detained during the anti-government protests of 2013, the ANKA news agency reported on Thursday.
The 2013 Gezi Park protests erupted over then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government’s plans to demolish Gezi Park in Taksim. The protests spread to other cities across the country and quickly turned into mass anti-government demonstrations that were violently suppressed by the government, leading to the death of 11 protestors due to the use of disproportionate force by the police.
Yapıcı had previously filed a complaint against three police officers, saying she was mistreated and subjected to harassment in detention, alleging that she was made to strip naked and squat. Yapıcı added that her medication was not provided to her on time, although she had suffered from gastric bleeding a short while before.
According to ANKA, the İstanbul 11th High Criminal Court handed down a suspended sentence of five months to each of the two female police officers on charges of “abuse of public duty” while acquitting one male officer.
Acts of maltreatment and torture in custody and in prisons is a systematic problem in Turkey about which local rights groups, parliamentarians and state authorities receive hundreds of complaints every year. Earlier this year, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution that expressed concern about an increase in alleged incidents reported from Turkey in past years.
After an attempted coup in 2016, ill-treatment and torture became widespread and systematic in Turkish detention centers. Lack of condemnation from higher officials and a readiness to cover up allegations rather than investigate them have resulted in widespread impunity for the security forces.
The European Court of Human Rights has found that strip-searches constitute degrading treatment when not justified by compelling security reasons and/or due to the way they are conducted.
However, the practice has frequently been used by Turkish security forces against people suspected or convicted of political crimes.