Türkiye: a struggle for control

Arda İbikoğlu. For much of the 20th century, Turkish prisons were forgotten backwaters of the State. The prison service had neither the power nor the resources to impose a stringent system on prisoners. The criminal justice system underwent significant changes, but prisons remained in the same state of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. In the second half of the century and under a military state geared towards national security and identity, Kurdish nationalist and left-wing revolutionary movements emerged. As tensions escalated and resistance to the State intensified, these movements became targets of criminalisation, leading to the imprisonment of their members.

The increasing number of political prisoners¹ also brought in a highly politicised and organised way of life that structured the prisons and led to informal agreements with the prison administration. Political groups ran their own wards, living in dormitory-type cells and controlling their daily life in the prison.

They set up communal living structures and their own regimes, with specific times for waking and sleeping, physical exercise and diet, as well as theoretical training during which they read political literature.

They established roles for different functions such as cooking, access to cigarettes and handling mail. The day was extremely tightly structured. Newly admitted political prisoners were placed in their respective organisation’s ward, as the prison administration would otherwise risk forms of protest from the prisoners such as riots or hunger strikes. Many people died protesting.

Over time, this situation became increasingly embarrassing for the State. Prison governors, for example, could not enter the ward without authorisation from the prisoners.

With the introduction of the Anti-Terror Law in 1991, the State increasingly began to criminalise opposition groups. The provisions were so broad that many people who had only a fleeting association with these organisations were identified as terrorists and imprisoned, leading some to become more closely associated with these organisations inside.

Throughout the 1990s, they launched attacks inside prisons to limit the control of these political organisations. Prisoners died and others were mutilated. The State eventually decided that new prisons needed to be built.

Aİ. In 1996, the prison administration introduced the Eskişehir special-type prison, a model based on individual cells. The goal was to separate prisoners and prevent them from organising amongst each other. Prisoners protested and went on hunger strikes, some of whom began to die after the 60th day. The prisoners succeeded in imposing an open-door policy, effectively leading back to a ward-like system. The State was unorganised at the time, unlike the political groups who collaborated effectively in their protests. The situation would later reverse, with the different political groups losing their cohesion and the State becoming increasingly organised, paving the way for the introduction of a new prison model in 1999: maximum-security F-type prisons.

This model was inspired by British and American prisons, and with the objective of breaking down the communal mindset. Prisons were made up of cells for one to three people, and no more than 10 people could gather in communal areas for restricted periods of time. Whereas these prisoners previously pooled their resources (money, clothes, cigarettes, food) together, emphasis was placed on individual belongings under the new regime. For example, money was removed and replaced by individual bank accounts and weekly allowances. The idea was that prisoners had personal money and had to use it for their own needs. They could not share it with others.

Political prisoners barricaded their units and staged pre-emptive hunger strikes against their transfer to these prisons.

In December 2000, the State attacked its own prisons with demolition equipment and gas bombs, destroying the walls and forcibly taking the prisoners on hunger strike to these new, partially completed maximum security prisons.

Many died as a result of the hunger strikes, but some were kept alive with vitamin supplements for up to 500 days.

The authorities argued that the other prisons provided unacceptable hygiene conditions and compromised prisoners’ rights. Political prisoners rejected this argument. They claimed that the State wanted to control prisoners. This was an ongoing struggle between oppositional social actors and the State, rather than an effort to implement serious prison reform. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) supported the new prisons, considering that they were more hygienic and that they allowed better conditions as each cell had a small outdoor courtyard accessible during the day, except in the case of prisoners under disciplinary sanctions.

Aİ. The maximum-security prison reform was very political in the sense that the prisoners targeted were those sentenced under the Anti-Terror Law, often used to target political opponents. The State’s goal was to break the prisoners’ communes. The reform was also part of a neo-liberal approach imported from the United States and Europe.

Political organisations introduced routine and a disciplinary regime with the aim of creating ‘soldier-prisoners’, while the State sought to create rational, utilitarian individuals responsible for their own behaviour. Prisoners who comply with the rules receive social benefits, while those who do not comply have their benefits withdrawn and are subject to disciplinary sanctions. A points system is employed to indicate the level of risk posed by a prisoner.

The prison administration does not see prisoners as people to be rehabilitated, but rather as people who choose to behave well, or not, in order to receive social benefits.

The system was introduced for the purpose of controlling political prisoners and dismantling their communal structures, but now characterises the prison system as a whole. These prisons were a novelty in the early 2000s, but have since become the standard.

Other prison reforms followed suit in the same neoliberal logic. Non-custodial sentences were introduced in 2006, along with higher mandatory minimum sentences and aggravated life sentences. These same reforms took place in the United States at the start of the neoliberal era in the late twentieth century. In 2000, there were around 58,000 people in Turkish prisons. Today, there are over 300,000. Combined with the 300,000 more people on probation, there are 600,000 people under the criminal justice system today.

In 2006 and 2007, I interviewed many former political prisoners, as well as officials from the Ministry of Justice and the prison administration. They gave me permission to enter the prisons. The political climate was different at the time because Türkiye wanted to present itself as the model democratic Islamic country. This changed in 2010 as access to information became more difficult.

Today, there is a crying lack of data. When it comes to accessing certain documents, the authorities have the final say on how the information can be used. They are not very cooperative. Human rights organisations also suffer because their access is increasingly limited. In terms of quality, there is more information on Ottoman prisons than contemporary prisons.