Close Pit-Type Prisons:
End Torture, Ill-Treatment and Rights Violations!
31 May 2024
Prisons in Turkey have always been places where torture and other acts of ill-treatment have always been common. The transformation of confinement from a measure to a means of punishment, the overcapacity of prisons, material conditions of prisons, including the choice of location and architecture, constitute the objective grounds for many violations of rights.
Especially since 2005, the practices of confinement, which have increased significantly every year, have led to the deepening of violations with designs that allow the implementation of different dimensions of isolation.
According to the data collected by the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses of the Ministry of Justice, the number of detainees and convicts, which was 55.870 in 2005, increased to 329.151 detainees and convicts in 403 penal execution institutions with a total capacity of 295.328 as of 2 May 2024, the date of the last publication of the data. Of these, 46,442 were on remand and 282,709 were convicted or sentenced. For a long time, the number of persons on remand or convicted, i.e. those whose sentences have not yet been upheld, has not been separately provided. There were also 13,891 women and 2,983 children convicted and detained in prisons.
According to these data, although the surplus capacity as of 2 May 2024 was only 33,823, the information below reveals the grave extent of the reality of prisons in Turkey.
Another regulation for enforcement of sentences, which is a kind of continuation of the 2020, was published in the Official Gazette on 15 July 2023 as the “Law on the Amendment of Certain Laws and the Decree Law No. 375 on the Amendment of the Additional Motor Vehicles Tax for the Compensation of Economic Losses Caused by the Earthquakes Occurring on 06.02.2023. With this regulation, which excludes certain types of criminal offenses and political prisoners with an approach contrary to the principle of equality and the prohibition of discrimination, many prisoners were released. With this regulation, the prerequisite for benefiting from rights such as probation and transfer to open prisons was designated as the offense committed by the prisoner. Furthermore, a situation far from legal certainty and certainty has been created by leaving discretionary power to the enforcement judges with the phrase “enforcement judges shall decide” in this regulation.
According to the data of the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses of the Ministry of Justice, considering that the number of detainees and convicts, which was 360.722 as of 3 July 2023, decreased to 270.607 as of 2 August 2023 and 251.101 as of 1 September 2023 after the “2023 Enforcement Regulation” was published in the Official Gazette on 15 July 2023 and entered into force, one can say that approximately 110,000 prisoners were released by taking advantage of this regulation, although no exact information was provided.
However, the number of detainees and convicts, which was 251,101 as of 1 September 2023, increased by 78,050 persons in a short period of eight months and reached 329,151 persons as of 2 May 2024. In other words, the number of detainees and convicts increased at the highest rate in Turkey’s recent history.
Moreover, Turkey has the highest number and percentage of prisoners in prisons in the Council of Europe. According to the 2022 Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics on prison populations published on 26 June 2023, 355 out of every 100 thousand people in Turkey are in prisons. This ratio is 117 on average in Council of Europe countries.
Moreover, the gravity of the situation becomes even more serious when this excessive increase is considered together with the number of people who are registered in and out of prisons every year, as stated in the prison statistics for the year 2022, which was published as the latest data on 22 May 2023 by the Ministry of Justice, General Directorate of Judicial Registry and Statistics. 301,410 people were admitted as convicts in prisons, while 264,844 people were registered as released convicts in 2022.
In addition, according to the data of the Ministry of Justice as of 1 April 2024, there were 233,824 people on probation in Turkey. When one adds this number to the number of detainees and convicts in prisons as of 2 May 2024, the number of citizens deprived of their freedom reaches approximately 582,975 people. This means that, leaving aside other indirect means of surveillance/supervision, approximately one out of every 148 citizens is under direct surveillance.
In 2020 and 2023, based on the amendments to the enforcement law, the number of detainees and convicts in prisons has increased by approximately 47 thousand in the last four years, although it appears that approximately 200 thousand prisoners have been released from prisons in the last four years, excluding “political prisoners and those detained only for expressing critical or dissenting views.”
Therefore, when the more than five and a half times increase in the number of detainees and convicts in the last 19 years, the high speed of the circulation of detainees and convicts in and out of prisons and the increase in the number of prisoners, and the high ratio of the number of prisoners in prisons to the total population are evaluated together, it is clearly seen how incarceration has become the primary technique of governance for the political power and how this situation is the most dominant social and political problem of Turkey.
While this is the case, 23 various prison types were opened in 2020, 32 in 2021, 22 in 2022, 16 in 2023 according to the data of the Ministry of Justice, and the target of opening 12 more in 2024 under the performance program of the Ministry of Justice for 2024 reveals the risk that the overcrowding problem in prisons will deepen in the coming period.
Moreover, among the new prisons, especially since 2021, a total of 51 new types of prisons[1] have been put into use under the names of “S Type Prisons,” “Y Type Prisons” and “High-Security Prisons”, including 22 Y type, 22 high security, and 7 S type, according to the latest data.
The most determining feature of these new type prisons, where most of the prisoners are held in solitary confinement cells and very few in three-person rooms, is that they aggravate the conditions of isolation with both their architectural structures and daily practice regime. As far as it is known, prisoners spend at least 22,5 hours a day in solitary confinement and practices that reach the level of “solitary confinement” become routine.
According to the information obtained from the letters sent to our organizations by prisoners, “The cells do not have access to fresh air and even prisoners who are not sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment are subjected to aggravated conditions. As you can see, these prisons are built to kill slowly.” It is stated that S and Y type prisons are in such a way that they cannot see the sun and are isolation-oriented: “There is news of deaths coming from prisons, the bodies of prisoners who were handed ‘in good health’ reports by the Forensic Medicine Institute come out of those prisons 2-3 days later”, and the negative effects on human health are emphasized.
Another prisoner, who stated in their letter that they could not even take a book with them to the area where they were taken out for fresh air, said: “Is it very important to walk in the rain, to read a book while sitting in the sun, to write a letter in the open air, to drink a sip of tea? Yes, it is very important if you are in prison. It is important to look for stars in the night sky, to hold your face to the wind,” drawing attention to the fact that they cannot even do normal activities.
Another prisoner wrote in their letter: “You are alone. The wardens say that you are alone now. They want to put you in such a mood to weaken you and break your resistance. You can never go out in the open air. You cannot see the sun, clouds, birds and the sky. There is only a yard that you can go out at certain hours, which makes you feel like you are in a pit. Everyone should demand the closure of these inhumane places” and calls on the society to act sensitively.
The isolation of prisoners is also aggravated with the S and Y type prisons built after the F-type prisons. S-type prisons, which are the increased capacity of F-type prisons in the high-security category, and Y-type prisons, which are the increased capacity of high-security prisons, are not only limited to prisoners sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment, but have turned into a space of ordinary confinement.
In high-security prisons, five corridors (sections) in each block are built as a separate block, while the cells are called “modules.” The doors of the cells are opened and closed by an automatic button pressed from the hut. This hut is called the Local Door Panel (LDP) and there is also a Central Door Panel (CDP) that monitors the LKDPs. Thus, every movement of the detainees is monitored and all communication is provided by megaphones and buttons.
The “module” cells are 12-13 square meters in size with a bathroom-toilet and kitchen countertop, and there is a window called a “sunshade” that opens onto an empty space resembling an apartment block. The windows on the first and second floors are covered with a steel mesh resembling a sieve in addition to iron railings, so that it is not even possible to see the sky. Cameras are installed in these cage-like windows (sunshades) to see inside the cells. There are also cameras inside the three-person cells. The fresh air area is 63 square meters in size, the ventilation of the two corridors that see each other is designed to be in diagonal alignment, the prison is walled on all four sides, surrounded by electric wires, and even the ceiling, which is the only open place, is covered with wires, giving the appearance of a cage.
In the report drafted by the Human Rights Association (İHD) Central Prisons Committee on Y and S type prisons, rights violations faced by prisoners were summarized as “standing roll-calls, isolation, strip searches, ill-treatment and isolation.”
According to this report, detainees are placed in single rooms as a result of the decisions of the Administrative and Observation Boards, regardless of the type of offense or sentence they have received. According to the data collected from the applications, the practices in S-type prisons cause many damages especially on human psychology, suspicious deaths, suicide cases, torture and ill-treatment practices are common. It is stated that in this type of prisons, prisoners’ relations both with the outside and with other prisoners are restricted as much as possible, their ties are cut and it is a policy that causes prisoners to spend their detention in absolute isolation.
Such prisons are designed to facilitate social isolation, dehumanization and isolation. In addition to this, since each cell has only one window and all windows open to a single area that can be defined as an apartment block, the architectural structuring designed in such a way that even the slightest noise in any cell is heard or echoed in all cells causes a serious problem such as being exposed to noise 24 hours a day.
While in other prisons the right to fresh air is granted to prisoners other than those convicted of aggravated life imprisonment by opening the ventilation door during the morning roll-call and closing it during the evening roll-call, in high security and Y-type prisons, the right to fresh air is restricted in violation of the law by making the ventilation time 1.5 hours, and since the ventilation area is not directly related to the prisoner’s cell, it is impossible to meet urgent and personal needs such as protection from rain and sun, toilet, etc. during this 1.5 hour period, and prisoners’ right to humane fresh air is taken away.
The fact that visiting days are separate and single for each prisoner instead of contact meetings where prisoners and their relatives share the same place prevents meeting and socializing with other prisoners and causes social isolation.
In addition to iron bars on the windows of high-security prisons, the densely woven wire mesh that does not allow sunlight also prevents both airing and benefiting from the sun. One of the most important features of S-type prisons is the presence of cameras in the cells. Prisoners spend 22.5 hours a day in a cell and even their most private behavior is monitored.
If the effects of such conditions on human health are listed:
- The need for “adequate, appropriate and variable external stimuli” is an absolute necessity for the protection of physical and mental health. It is scientifically recognized that prolonged isolation causes many irreversible damages on human health.
- Isolation can lead to a lack of sensory and perceptual stimuli and the development of perception and sensory disorders. This situation can lead to some psychiatric diseases, as well as problems such as decreased sense of sight and hearing, disorientation in space, time and place, attention and mood disorders. Complete isolation from the external environment results in a weakened immune system.
- In addition to causing psychiatric disorders, the cell-type enforcement system causes many physical illnesses in the short-medium and long terms. A life of living in a narrow, small and sunlight-free space without being able to move sufficiently causes many diseases, especially musculoskeletal diseases, diabetes, hypertension and cancer.
- Considering that solitary cells are built in a way that does not allow prisoners to establish a relationship with any living creature, the fact that the fresh air areas are 25 m2 and surrounded by 8-meter-high walls, and that a prisoner is condemned to live isolated from all their social and cultural environment by seeing only the sky for many years, and is also kept under constant surveillance and supervision from the outside is against human rights and detrimental to human health.
We, therefore, say:
- Stop building new prisons!
- Release seriously ill prisoners immediately!
- Make the architecture of these prisons, which lead to deaths and diseases, worthy of human dignity!
- Stop using incarceration as a means of punishment!
Human Rights Association
Human Rights Foundation of Turkey
Turkish Medical Association – Human Rights Branch