Pressure on prisoners has recently increased at Bolu Prison. The releases of political prisoners there are being postponed through coerced “repentance” statements, and guards are reportedly mistreating inmates.
The family, originally from Kozluk, Êlih (Batman), farmed tobacco and grazed their animals near the village guard (korucu) village of Hamidiler. Because they opposed being forced into the village guard system, they faced repression. State pressure eventually led to their village being burned, after which the family first moved to Êlih and later to Istanbul.
Detained on 11 January 1994 in the village of Ridvanê, in Qubîn (Beşiri), Êlih (Batman), together with his brother Mahfuz Türkan, Maruf Türkan was taken to the Erenzê (Beşpınar) station, where he was tortured. After these torture-tainted detentions, the brothers were brought before the Diyarbakır State Security Court (SSC), remanded, and sent to Diyarbakır Type E Prison. Treated for two months by fellow inmates there, Türkan was later exiled to prisons in Erzurum and Kandıra.
Political prisoner Maruf Türkan is currently held in Bolu Prison, and his release was once again postponed in recent days. His brother, Metin Türkan, spoke to ANF about the repression they have endured, the treatment of his brother, and their expectations for the new phase.
They tortured my brother in interrogations for a month
Noting that his brothers were detained in 1993 and subjected to prolonged torture in custody, and that while Mahfuz Türkan was released shortly thereafter, Maruf has been imprisoned for more than 30 years, Türkan said: “In the last month of 1993, my two older brothers were taken and tortured in custody for a long time. I had just gone to do my military service. They offered me village guard duty and to be an informant. I said, ‘Am I the Batman Gazette that I should report everyone coming and going to you?’ They threw me out and called my father.
They beat me in front of my father and set the village on fire. We moved to Batman and stayed there for two years; when that didn’t work out, we came to Istanbul.”
Saying they moved to Istanbul and worked hard to have his imprisoned brother transferred there as well, Türkan continued: “At the time my brother was in Erzurum. We sent money and told him, ‘Try to get moved toward Istanbul.’ He was transferred to Kandıra Prison, then to Bolu. As soon as he arrived, he went on a hunger strike for 87 days. We couldn’t visit for six months. When we finally did, he was skin and bones. Thank God, we are not regretful; nor is he.”
They’re forcing ‘repentance’
Türkan said that even in this new process, the state is still imposing repentance on prisoners, but they feel no remorse: “Now they say ‘we want peace,’ yet they still force repentance. We went to prison recently, and I said, ‘Stop imposing repentance. No one has regretted anything up to now; neither the families nor the prisoners themselves.’
You’re setting up a peace commission. Why? Everything is at the tip of your tongue. Take some steps; for example, education in the mother tongue. Make a move. They have already taken steps and are waiting for you. You say, ‘I will meet with families of martyrs.’ Aren’t we also families of martyrs? No one came here for nothing.
Prisoners are not repentant, and neither is my brother. They did not recognize the court, saying, ‘You cannot judge me.”