Turkish opposition chief Ozgur Ozel on Monday denounced the “ill-treatment” of students arrested over the mass protest gripping the country following the 19 March arrest of Istanbul’s mayor.
“These students have been badly treated, their hands cuffed behind their backs, held for hours without being told which prison they were being taken to,” said Ozel who heads the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Ozel’s remarks came a day after he visited Silivri prison to see Ekrem Imamoglu, the Istanbul mayor who is viewed as the only politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box.
Imamoglu was named CHP’s candidate for the 2028 race on the day he was jailed.
While in the prison, Ozel said he spent eight hours talking to students jailed over the protests that erupted in Istanbul after Imamoglu’s arrest and quickly spread across Turkey in the country’s worst street unrest since 2013.
“Each student was subjected to verbal abuse, curses and ill-treatment,” he said, also citing cases of people lying on the floor being “kicked in the face” or had “pressure exerted on their head”.
Their detention, which coincided with the Eid public holiday marking the end of Ramadan, amounted to “psychological torture,” he charged.
Despite everything, they were generally “in good health, but not should be kept in jail for another 18 to 20 days until the first hearing,” he said, demanding their immediate release as they had “no blood on their hands”.
“We have avoided targeting our police and will continue to do so but there is no forgiveness for ill-treatment,” he said, urging victims to “keep evidence” of any abuses for a future reckoning.
So far, around 2,000 people have been detained across Turkey since 19 March, of which some 260 have been held in pre-trial detention, the interior minister said on Thursday.
Lawyer Ferhat Guzel told AFP on Thursday that at least 511 students had been detained in Istanbul alone, of which 275 had been jailed. He said the real figure was “probably much higher”.
In a statement released on Saturday, public healthcare associations said they had “observed ill-treatment both during (police) interventions and detentions, in police custody and during legal proceedings,” notably in Turkey’s main cities.
