Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

28 die in Turkish battle for Jails
by Guardian Newspapers - Sunday December 24, 2000
Posted: Sunday, December 24, 2000 11:04 pm CST

Militant prisoners are crushed after protest against smaller cells

Firdevs Robinson in Ankara and Burak Baktir in Istanbul Observer

Burnt books, smashed chairs and charred mattresses littered the halls of a prison in Istanbul yesterday. The authorities displayed weapons they found inside - pistols, home-made flame-throwers, bows and arrows tipped with syringe needles.

After four days of fighting that left at least 26 inmates and two soldiers dead, with 133 injured, the Turkish government regained control of 20 jails across the country. The last to resist, Umraniye jail in Istanbul, was retaken on Friday when 430 inmates surrendered.

According to the Interior Ministry, 16 of the inmates who died over the four days burnt themselves alive. For an operation named 'Return To Life', it was a bloody legacy.

Yesterday the authorities began the task of explaining to their own people and the international community - long critical of a prison system riddled with corruption and violence - why the assaults had been necessary.

Interior Minister Hikmet Sami Turk said: 'I would like the Turkish nation to openly see how the terrorist organisations were dragging our young into a quagmire.'

The government has been under growing pressure to impose discipline on Turkey's jails. The latest bout of unrest began months ago, when the authorities decided to dismantle the large wards which, they said, were ungovernable and often no-go areas for staff, and replace them with smaller units.

Militants said that they feared the authorities would abuse them if they were separated from each other, and hundreds began a hunger strike that they vowed to continue until they died or the government backed down.

The government's offer to postpone opening the new jails had no effect. On Tuesday, hundreds of troops stormed 20 prisons.

Inmates who had been on a hunger strike for almost two months were taken to hospitals, where many were refusing medical treatment. Officials have said they will be fed by force if necessary.

The authorities took the media to some of the prisons involved. At Istanbul's Bayr-ampasa jail they said that the wards, holding more than a dozen prisoners each, were being run by the inmates and had, in effect, degenerated into militant training camps.

Bayrampasa housed the leaders of the militant left- wing Revolutionary People's Liberation Party Front, the Turkish Workers and Peasant Liberation Army, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party and the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, which had called off its hunger strike.

Police showed reporters captured weapons, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle and 57 spent bullets, four pistols, 101 knives and dozens of arrows topped with needles from syringes. The inmates also had makeshift gas masks made of plastic soft-drink bottles, as well as a home-made satellite dish.

On Tuesday soldiers burst in and fought their way into the wards - the first time the authorities had entered some of the areas in almost a decade.

Days later, bullet holes could be seen in the doors and walls of the wards. Black soot covered most of the living quarters of the two-floor wards, which were littered with charred mattresses.

The downstairs area was covered with broken desks and chairs. A smashed aquarium lay scattered in the corner of one ward.

In the garden outside one of the wards sat a large cage filled with 30 black-and-white pigeons that the inmates were raising. The cage was partly smashed open, but the pigeons remained inside. Raising pigeons is a popular hobby in Turkey.

In other jails, overcrowded wards housing 100 inmates were controlled by Stalinist organisations or by the extreme Islamist groups. If it wasn't one of the political organisations, it was mafia- type gangs that ruled the roost.

In the new prisons, called F-type, individual cells or rooms house two or three people. The authorities showed journalists around, pointing to the better personal space and modern facilities.

But human rights groups say the problems go much deeper than the accommodation. They include corrupt warders and systematic violence against prisoners.

'If you want to measure the value of human life in a society, look at the prisons,' says Yilmaz Ensaroglu, president of the human rights group Mazlum Der. 'The scene at the end of this latest crackdown is the glorification of death by the militants and the scant disregard for human life by the officials. What I see in this mirror horrifies me.'

In addition to the move to small cells, the Turkish government has begun freeing thousands of inmates to reduce overcrowding and make it easier to take control of the prisons.

The government freed hundreds of prisoners on Friday as the widespread amnesty began.

The amnesty will free half of the country's 72,000 prisoners, but will not apply to prisoners who opposed the state. That includes Islamic, Kurdish or left-wing radicals such as those at Bayrampasa.

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