A Kurdish prisoner has died in suspicious circumstances in a Turkish prison. This is the second such incident following recent inspections of the prisons in question by the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT). Ercan Çakar, a Kurdish prisoner, died in Iğdır S-Type Prison on Sunday. He had been in prison for over a decade.
Çakar was serving a 32-year sentence on various charges, and had recently been transferred from Bandırma T-Type Prison No.2. His uncle Ömer Hanay revealed that the family had been informed of visible marks of beating on Çakar’s body, but that the autopsy report had been withheld, and announced plans to lodge a complaint.
Çakar was buried in his home town of Muş in Malazgirt. In response to Çakar’s death, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party MP Yılmaz Hun accused the prison authorities of torture and maltreatment, leading to Çakar’s alleged suicide just days after he had complained of such treatment to his parents by telephone.
Earlier this month, Reber Soydan, another Kurdish political prisoner, met a similar fate, also under dubious circumstances, at Van F-Type High Security Prison. Arrested two years ago and charged with disrupting the unity and integrity of the state, Soydan was reportedly held in solitary confinement prior to his alleged suicide. His death heightened scrutiny on the treatment of detainees, particularly those from the Kurdish community.
Both these tragic events occur in the wake of an ad hoc visit by the CPT in February this year, which included both Iğdır S Type and Van F-type Prisons among the sites of inspection.
That the deaths occurred despite this recent scrutiny has fuelled criticisms from both local and international human rights organisations, who question the efficacy of the CPT’s oversight, especially regarding the treatment of Kurdish political prisoners and the continued absolute isolation of Abdullah Öcalan, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader. Öcalan is currently prevented from any contact with the outside world, including family visits, legal counsel, telephone calls or letters, raising serious concerns about violations of his human rights and human rights in Turkish prisons in general.
