A Turkish educator abducted from Kyrgyzstan by Turkish intelligence in 2021 has told an opposition lawmaker that he was denied surgery for 16 months after his arm was broken in three places during torture while in custody, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.
Orhan İnandı told Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a human rights defender and opposition lawmaker who visited the teacher in prison, that he was taken to a hospital two months after the injury, but hospital staff told him surgery was no longer possible due to the delay. He was finally operated on after another visit 14 months later.
Kırgızistan’dan kaçırılıp Türkiye’ye getirilen eğitimci Orhan İnandı, kendisini cezaevinde ziyaret eden Mv. Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu’na işkence gördüğünü, kolunun üç yerden kırıldığını ve tedavisinin yapılmadığını aktardı. pic.twitter.com/ofT3Otxh1J
— Odak Dünyam (@odakdunyam) January 21, 2025
Gergerlioğlu, a deputy from the pro-Kurdish People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), shared the details of İnandı’s account on X after his visit to Ankara’s Sincan Prison.
“He was held in a five-square-meter room for 37 days, where the torture took place,” Gergerlioğlu said.
İnandı, the founder and director of the prestigious Sapat school network operating in Kyrgyzstan, went missing at the end of May 2021 in Bishkek and was found in detention at the Ankara Police Department in early July.
He was abducted due to his links to the Gülen movement by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT), which has been involved in unlawfully transferring people to Turkey from countries around the world.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen since corruption investigations revealed in 2013 implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan as well as some of his family members and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began targeting its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following a failed coup in 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding.
Gülen and the movement have strongly denied involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
An indictment drafted by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in July 2021 charged İnandı with “managing an armed terrorist organization” and sought a prison sentence of up to 22 years. The Ankara 3rd High Criminal Court gave him a prison sentence of 21 years in June 2023.
Photos of İnandı in police custody in handcuffs with Turkish flags prompted allegations of torture at the time due to İnandı’s visible weight loss and swollen right hand.
At the first hearing of his trial in November 2021, İnandı said he was subjected to torture for 37 days.
According to İnandı, he was abducted by three people, including two Kyrgyz nationals, and forced into a car. They changed vehicles twice, and he was taken to the border of either Uzbekistan or Tajikistan. During the ordeal, the teacher, whose arm was broken as a result of beatings, was blindfolded and also given sleeping pills. İnandı bases his estimates on what he saw from a small gap in the blindfold.
The teacher said he was brought to Turkey in a private jet and was beaten during the journey. He added that two people wearing ski masks took him to the plane’s bathroom and recorded him on video while he stated his name and where he came from.
After getting off the plane, İnandı was put into a car and stripped down to his underwear. He was then taken to a three-square-meter room with walls covered by sound-resistant material and a microphone and camera on the ceiling. Given new clothes, the teacher was subjected to further beating in this room, according to the report.
İnandı said he was given bread, cheese and olives twice a day for meals and was taken to the toilet three times a day. He added that he was not allowed to use the toilet when needed and was forcibly fed if he refused to eat the meal provided.
İnandı described another room where he was taken for interrogation as follows: “There was a table in the middle, with handcuffs, a baton and an electric device on top of it. Behind the table, leather chairs were leaning against the wall.”
The teacher said a man talked to him before others interrogated him and said: “We are the state. We can kill you. So, you will tell us everything.”
İnandı said he was frequently beaten throughout the interrogations, stripped two or three times, threatened with harm to his daughter once and given electric shocks to his leg once.
The teacher was offered a chance to spy on followers of the Gülen movement and was asked about the administrators he knew in Kyrgyzstan, the movement’s organization in the country and what he knew about the July 15 coup attempt.
In addition, İnandı was asked about the Gülen movement’s alleged connection to several unsolved murders and whether opposition politicians Meral Akşener and Ali Babacan had any ties to the movement.
Since the coup attempt in July 2016 the Erdoğan government has employed extra-legal methods to secure the return of its critics after its official extradition requests have been denied. The government’s campaign has mostly relied on renditions, in which the government and its intelligence agency MİT persuade the relevant states to hand over individuals without due process. The victims have been the subjects of a number of human rights violations including arbitrary arrests, house raids, torture and ill-treatment during these operations.
A detailed account of the Erdoğan government’s transnational repression can be found in a report by the Stockholm Center for Freedom titled “Turkey’s Transnational Repression: Abduction, Rendition and Forcible Return of Erdoğan Critics.”
In several of these cases, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) concluded that the arrest, detention and forced transfer to Turkey of Turkish nationals were arbitrary and in violation of international human rights norms and standards.