A human rights group, which has strong ties with Washington, warned of renewed police torture in Turkey and the kidnapping of persons accused of being involved in the July 2016 military coup attempt or terrorism.
"People in Turkey accused of links with terrorism or with the 2016 military coup attempt have been tortured in police custody, while others have been abducted, amidst growing evidence of detention abuses," the Human Rights Watch said in a press release.
According to the watchdog, the report provided "credible evidence" of 11 cases of abuse in detention, which involved scores of individuals. The report's findings are based on interviews with relatives and lawyers as well as an analysis of court transcripts, which contained allegations that police " severely beat and threatened detainees, stripped them naked, and in some cases threatened them with sexual assault or sexually assaulted them."
It has been alleged for a long time that those people who were detained particularly after the July 15 coup attempt have been exposed to torture. Even the Turkish police leaked some photographs to the public, proving that the coup suspects have been battered. HRW has released this information upon the arrest of Metin Topuz, a Turkish employee of the U.S. consulate in İstanbul, and following the allegation that yet another consulate employee under a search warrant is hiding at the consulate building.
Turkish government claims that these two persons are linked to the network of U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, which was one of the masterminds of the coup attempt. Posing no real challenge to Gülen but declared a state of emergency upon the coup attempt with arrests or purges of opponents, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made a move to save himself after he was discarded by the U.S.
The rights group said it had recorded five abduction cases in the Turkish cities of Ankara and Izmir between March and June 2017, adding that they could be equal to enforced disappearances.
Several lawyers told the HRW that their clients told them of torture or showed them physical evidence. But they said that many victims are afraid to complain, fearing reprisals against their family members. In one case HRW documented, the former head of a preschool told a court at length at his trial in February that police had beaten and threatened him with sexual assault and rape to make him confess his involvement with FETÖ. Six other men on trial with him made similar assertions.
The group said, citing official figures, that more than 150,000 people, accused of involvement in the July 2016 coup attempt or terrorism, passed through police custody in 2016.
Having strong links to the U.S. deep state, the Gülenist network became one of the masterminds of the coup attempt. However, Gülen had been a big partner of Erdoğan and the AKP government in the past. After Erdoğan came into power, he suppressed his opponents with the support of the Gülenist organization that had infiltrated into the state institutions and the army. Nevertheless, the alliance of Gülen and Erdoğan failed in recent years.
The 2016 military coup attempt in Turkey was followed by Ankara declaring a national state of emergency and wave of arrests across the country. The detentions mainly targeted officials, military personnel, legal and educational workers over their alleged ties to the network of Gülen, which Ankara refers to as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ).
