Former detainee: Tragedy and torture overwhelm Turkish prisons

“The series of arrests in Turkey and Bakur Kurdistan continues under flimsy pretexts,” says a former detainee in the prisons of the Turkish state.

18 February, 2021 08:48

Qamishlo-Renas Ramo

The government of Justice and Development led by Erdogan continues to arrest politicians and opinion-holders in Turkey under the same pretexts that it suppresses its opponents, "terrorists", in a clear indication that the Turkish government seeks to suppress the voice of truth and freedom of opinion.

Haif Salih Haji, one of the former detainees, who spent about 7 years in Turkish prisons, talks to our agency about the reasons for his arrest, and confirms that his family's patriotic affiliation with the Kurdish liberation movement was the Turkish authorities' excuse for driving him to prison.

Haif Saleh Haji comes from the state of Mardin in Bakur, Kurdistan, and he, like the majority of young Kurds, sought a job opportunity. Haji decided with his family to settle in Rojava in the nineties of the last century, and he took the trade profession as a path for him.

In 2010, Haji was arrested while he was on a visit to Bakur Kurdistan, and the argument is ready and consumed by the Turkish authorities, belonging to the PKK.

In details, Haji says about that stage that "the Turkish state wages a special war on the prisoners," and indicates that the arrest of intellectuals and politicians comes in the first place in an attempt to break the will of the Kurdish people who are struggling to achieve their demands.

Hajji added that these violations were a card that the Turkish authorities used to pressure the detainees' families, by transferring them from one prison to another, and preventing their relatives from meeting or even contacting them, in an attempt to affect them psychologically and disperse them.

During the period that Haji spent in Turkish prisons, he moved between 3 prisons (Slavri in Istanbul - Kandra in Izmit in the Turkish Marmara region - and Tekirdag, or what is called "Gurlo"). Narrating his bitter experience in prison, Hajji says: "During that period we were under the most horrific types of persecution and psychological pressure," indicating that they were in a prison inside a prison.

Persecution of political prisoners and concessions for drug traffickers

In another context, Haji talks about the bad treatment that political prisoners were receiving, and in return, prisoners accused of drug smuggling were receiving better treatment as they were allowed to exercise all rights, and this policy began with the arrival of the Justice and Development Party led by Erdogan to power, and in this regard, Haji says not only that, they deprived us from water, communications, and newspapers, while drug dealers were allowed, and their sentence was facilitated as a day is counted as two days), unlike Kurdish prisoners and political prisoners.

Hajji was subjected to the worst treatment of the prison administration during that period, from severe abuse and psychological pressure.

Solitary cells for liquidation

Haif Salih Haji indicates that the Turkish authorities were liquidating political prisoners by jailing them in solitary confinement, i.e. (isolating him from the rest of the prisoners and placing him in small cells not exceeding two meters' limits and with dim lighting), for a period of no less than 5 to 6 years of torture and psychological stress in an attempt to announce their surrender.

The Turkish authorities apply this method to leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was exposed to an international conspiracy on March 15, 1999, the participation of several regional and Arab countries.

Prison resistance

However, this does not mean that the matter is tightly controlled by the Turkish authorities, as it has become clear that the resistance shown by the detainees in prisons has free will, as Hajji explains, "They turned all these practices and violations against them into heroic resistance."

During his rule, Haji participated 4 times in hunger strike activities, one of which lasted 68 days, he confirms "the resistance is beneficial", because the Turkish authorities deny the detainees all their rights.

In the context of the resistance, the detainees turned prisons into academies for training and education in order to withstand the darkest conditions that they are exposed to by the administration responsible for prisons. According to the Kurdish street, they continue to resist. "

Supporting the prison resistance is the demand of every prisoner

Hajji added that the resistance that is taking place in prisons aims to awaken the Kurdish street from its negligence, Kurdish people’s duty is to support and back this resistance in light of what the detainees are subjected to in the prisons of the Turkish authorities.

The Turkish authorities arrested a relative of Haif Salih Haji, along with her young children, and the same argument is for supporting the HDP, in an attempt by the authorities to suppress freedoms and exterminate the Kurds.

In addition, Haji says that despite condemning the international silence regarding the violation of rights detainees face in the prisons of the Turkish authorities, but it is all in vain, on the contrary, this silence opens the way for the Turkish authorities to act as they want.

Violations of the detainees' families

The violations pursue the families of the detainees, and in this regard Hajji says: “What is being practiced today in Turkey in terms of injustice against the detainees contradicts all international rights and covenants.” He continues, “Under the pretext of searching their relatives while visiting their children, the prison administration was stripping them, and this is evidence of the violations that have been committed."

The former detainee in Turkish prisons, Haif Salih Haji, described the heroic resistance inside Turkish prisons as "historical and rare," stressing that the detainees do not surrender to the will of the Turkish state, although they are innocent and despite all the difficult conditions inside the prison, they have a strong and high spirit, Haji confirmed that the Kurdish people continue on the path of their freedom until their demands are met.

J.O

ANHA