A Torture-Free Turkey?

A Terror Torture-Free Turkey?

Does this smell like ‘democracy’ – or does it just smell?

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

“They blindfolded me, handcuffed me by one hand to the interrogation table and began kicking at my legs till I fell down on the floor, still suspended by one arm to the table above. I was hit in the back of my head, kicked repeatedly in my stomach and then I felt boots striking me in my back. I was uncuffed and then dragged down rough, concrete steps and shoved into a windowless, airless, basement that stank of urine. There, the police then grabbed at my clothes and stripped me naked. Electronic cables were attached to my genitals, and I was given repeated electric shocks till I screamed and begged them to stop…”1

Torture in Turkey and police brutality have not improved one iota since the supposed ‘peace process’ between Erdoğan’s autocracy and the PKK began.

Turkish torture methods include not only the giving of electric shocks to the genitals, but sexual assault and rape of both male and female detainees (with hard objects and through genetic contact). The deprivation of food, water and light, as well as isolation. The detainee is likely to be held for two or three days at a time without charge and without access to a lawyer or family member. Incommunicado detention is often imposed in unsanitary (filthy) conditions. A confession will then be tailormade to whatever the police demand despite the actual circumstances and fear aroused to induce a detainee to confess.

Broad context of repression

The 2025 Global Torture Index released by the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT in French) on June 25, of that year puts Turkey in the second-highest risk tier among 26 countries assessed, citing widespread allegations of torture, unchecked police violence and legal and institutional barriers that block accountability…

Turkey was designated a high-risk country ‘due to weak institutional safeguards and a rapidly shrinking civic space.’ A diagram usefully provided in an article by Turkish Minute illustrates the following sequences:

The group went on to state that the ‘OMCT’s analysis shows that ‘torture and ill-treatment are particularly common during politically charged investigations under Counterterrorism Law No. 3713, which Turkish authorities routinely use to arrest perceived opponents, including journalists, Kurdish activists and critics of the government…

The law’s vague language and broad definition of terrorism allow for expansive application with little judicial oversight…The index categorizes Turkey’s response to impunity as high risk, reflecting systemic barriers to justice and a lack of political will to prosecute perpetrators…’ 3

Informants

Coercion of detainees to inform against the organisation, political party, civil society group cultural or religious association that they support occurs during and following torture sessions coupled with further threats of harm including to friends and family members. The demand that the detainee consent to become an informant is often proffered as a means to ending the torture session.

The Turkish Intelligence Agency (MIT) also formally works to recruit and then deploy informants to monitor opposition activists who are living abroad. According to Nordic Monitor: ‘MIT agents stationed at Turkish embassies and consulates reportedly pre-screen individuals for potential recruitment.

Upon arrival in Turkey, these targets are approached by agents — sometimes at airports — who attempt to persuade or pressure them into cooperating with the agency.…MIT has followed a systematic approach over the past decade, allowing it to establish an extensive network of assets and informants — particularly in Europe, where the largest number of Turkish expatriates resides.

The agency’s primary objectives include monitoring political dissidents, influencing the foreign policy of host nations through proxies, identifying possible vulnerabilities and enhancing Turkey’s diplomatic leverage…While MIT maintains a permanent presence at most airports, these specialized teams are tasked exclusively with recruitment operations and report directly to headquarters in Ankara… 4

Facial Recognition Technology is also in widespread use by the police at demonstrations and in the airports.5

Monitoring, identification, repression

The goals of the Turkish state have not fundamentally changed since the PKK’s foundation – these goals – and the methods that help forge them – focus on destroying (‘dismantling’) the PKK – and ending overall Kurdish and popular resistance.

Kurds in Turkey that support parties other than the PKK (and the quasi-legal chain of parties from HEP through to the HDP/DEM 6) also face high risks of torture based on their imputed political opinion. Civilians that take part in pro-Kurdish demos, people who try to celebrate Newroz, and those that protest against Turkish incursions into Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan etc. all face being detained at random and beaten or tortured in custody.

The youngest generations of Kurds growing up in Turkey have never known any security of life.  Far-right nationalist attitudes that underpin much of Turkish identity prevail overall.

Recep Onursal, a lecturer in politics and international conflict analysis observed last year, “Since 1993, peace efforts — including PKK ceasefires, back-channel talks, and a formal peace process  — have failed due to spoilers, lack of transparency, and the State’s reluctance to address root causes. Without structural changes to the political order, this initiative is likely to collapse like previous efforts.…The conflict also extends beyond Turkey, shaping — and shaped by — regional and international dynamics.”

“Kurdish political movements in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, along with Turkey’s foreign policy and relations with the United States and the European Union, influence both State actions and Kurdish strategies. International pressures, regional power struggles, and shifting alliances continue to determine whether the conflict moves toward resolution or escalation…” 7

Turkey’s abuse of Interpol is also an issue in how the state tries to undermine opposition. A Statewatch article from 2023 cited a letter from the Arrested Lawyers Network, headed, Interpol must halt Turkey’s use of databases to pursue dissidents.

It urged that: “Interpol must do more to prevent the Turkish government misusing its databases to target political dissidents abroad, says an open letter to the organisation’s secretary-general signed by more than 25 individuals and organisations, including Statewatch. The letter calls for Turkey to be suspended from using Interpol databases – in particular, the Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) system – until the problem is dealt with. 8

Has the PKK overlooked the needs and desires of Kurds?

It is important to ask why Öcalan and the PKK have so long failed to criticise their Turkish counterparts over the ongoing use of torture and extrajudicial killing of civilians when so many are still being detained for expressing legitimate Kurdish aspirations or voicing discontent over the treatment meted out by their Turkish ‘brothers’. The laws work against them rather than providing any protection.

As Kurdish analyst, Shakhawan Shorsh, argued in his perceptive article, Turkey’s Parliamentary Approval to Dissolve the PKK: ‘The “Law” on Strengthening National Consensus and Social Unity, approved by a majority vote in the Turkish Parliament on August 10, 2026, addresses several issues related to the release of certain prisoners, procedures for surrender, and the dissolution of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)… Despite these measures, the law contains no explicit or implicit reference to the cultural, political, or national rights of the Kurdish people. Notably, the word “Kurd” does not appear in the legislation…” 9

Shakhawan Shorsh highlights the distinctions between the Turkish nationalist view of the Kurds in their midst and the thorny issues of Kurdish rights, Kurdish identity, culture, experience, the occupation of Kurdish lands and capture of resources, inter alia.

Who might be set free?

In calling for (Utopian) social change, and the release of prisoners, the PKK fails to emphasise the prevalence of torture still in use against Kurdish civilians (and others) by the Turkish security and intelligence services – these include the Cyber Security Presidency, MIT, the civil police, the gendarmes, the army, village guards, the Anti-Terror Forces, Special Forces and, indeed, various Turkish-backed Islamist paramilitaries going back to the years of Turkish Hizbullah (Türk Hizbullahı) the Grey Wolves, and other state-sanctioned murderers.

Western media sources have recently chosen to apply a positive spun to the approval of the new ‘Terror-Free Turkey’ law claiming it equates to ‘PKK reintegration’ despite the details only actually describing a ‘limited amnesty for Kurdish PKK militants’ – vague details. This is something we have heard before but have never seen to occur in meaningful terms.

France 24 reported: “After 12 hours of debate, lawmakers voted by 468 in favour to 88 against, with six abstentions, for the so-called “terror-free Turkey law” which envisages a return to civilian life for some of the PKK fighters who lay down their weapons without granting a total amnesty…But crucially, the text does not specify what will become of Öcalan, 77, who has spent the past 27 years being held in solitary confinement on Imrali prison island near Istanbul …The move is expected to involve the release of around 3,500 PKK-linked detainees in an initial phase, lawmakers said – around a third of the number held in Turkish prisons… ” 10

It’s not just about the PKK

Meanwhile, thousands of victims of Turkish death squads, the Disappeared, and political prisoners locked up across Turkey under Erdoğan’s special provisions are left out of the picture.

The long-running Saturday Mothers that congregated for years in Istanbul seeking information about their missing loved ones have faced endemic police harassment and raids on their demonstrations and private homes since the 1990s. Last year, 45 demonstrators were finally acquitted after being detained for seven long years from their 700th peaceful vigil.

Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Europe, Dinushika Dissanayake, commented: “Almost seven years after the Saturday Mothers’ 700th peaceful vigil was violently broken up by riot police, 45 people standing trial for participating in the vigil have finally been acquitted and their ordeal ended. A prosecution that should have never seen the light of day, dragged on for years.”11

Turkey’s prisons currently hold around 420,000 detainees – a historic high according to Nordic Monitor. The group noted how: ‘Experts attribute the historic surge in inmate numbers to two intertwined factors: the rise in organized crime and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s policy of jailing political opponents…The Global Organized Crime Index recently ranked Turkey as Europe’s leading country in terms of state-linked organized crime actors.

The presence of mafia groups, drug traffickers and armed networks has grown significantly, exacerbated by years of government tolerance and corruption…At the same time President Erdoğan’s government has used the prison system as a political tool. While several amnesty bills were introduced over the past decade, ostensibly to reduce prison overcrowding, they were applied selectively.

Hundreds of thousands of convicts, including mafia members and extremists, were released, but political prisoners, dissidents, journalists, academics, activists and perceived opponents of the ruling party were deliberately excluded. This selective application has allowed violent offenders to regain their freedom while keeping critics behind bars, reinforcing the perception that amnesties serve political rather than humanitarian or penal purposes…’12

In 2025, a statement signed by 12 international organisations, including Statewatch, called on the Turkish government to “release political prisoners as part of a push to stop prison overcrowding…However, it is regrettable that similar laws passed in 2020 and 2023 discriminate against political prisoners who have been imprisoned under Turkey’s overly broad anti-terrorism provision (Article 314 of the Turkish Penal Code). This means that lawyers, journalists, politicians, artists, judges and prosecutors, and human rights defenders who have been imprisoned or convicted on terrorism-related charges will not benefit from early release.’ 13

Among their ranks is the popular CHP opposition leader, Ekrem Imamoğlu, who posed a challenge to Erdoğan’s continued presidency and, of course, the high profile HDP co-chair, Selahattin Demirtaş, whose release the European Court of Human Rights ordered on August 20, 2025 – to no effect.

Despite Turkey’s obligation under Article 46 to comply after nine years of wrongful imprisonment Erdoğan has rebutted the Court’s demands from the outset claiming its decisions are not binding and thereby defying the ruling. Selahattin Demirtaş, was jailed on November 4, 2016, over protests against ISIS taking of the Kurdish town of Kobane. 14 Other charges under the wide cast net of the Anti-Terror law followed.

Erdoğan’s state now appears to act almost entirely under his presidential command – sharing a page with Donald Trump. Abdullah Bozkurt, writing for Nordic Monitor observed that on July 24, 2026, another new law was adopted. The Electronic Communications Law with its newly added Article 60/A ‘grants the Cyber Security Presidency sweeping powers over citizens’ access to internet sites, digital surveillance and wiretapping…’

Bozkurt summarised that Turkey has ‘transferred far-reaching powers over wiretapping, internet access, communications infrastructure, online censorship and digital traffic from the country’s telecommunications regulator to the executive-controlled Cyber Security Presidency (Siber Güvenlik Başkanlığ), a sweeping restructuring that is designed to further empower President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and institutionalize censorship and digital surveillance under the guise of national security…’

With the new ‘Terror-Free Turkey’ law just passed, one can ask: ‘Does this smell like ‘democracy’ – or does it just smell?’

Related posts:

Business with ISIS – Updated Turkey: The Psychological War Against the Kurds Through the PKK – Part I What makes a good NATO ally? The Case of Turkey Turkey: Nato’s Islamic State Member Interview with Kurdish hostage, Huseyin Baybasin “ISLAMBUL” The Hit List: Killing pro-Kurds on the orders of the Turkish State – then and now No democracy in Turkey – ‘insulting Kurdishness’: Interview with Sheri Laizer Debunked PKK Leader Ocalan Will Never Be Set Free Turkey’s Parliamentary Approval to Dissolve the PKK