28.11.1996

Holiday in hell

Turkey is an increasingly popular holiday destination for people from Britain. Some people who go there from this country get more than they bargain for, or certainly witness more than they expected.

I am not talking about lizards in bidets, substandard service in hotels or overpriced alcohol. I am talking about torture. Not inflicted on tourists, but witnessed by them.

This was the subject of a ‘World in Action’ report on Turkey, broadcast on November 18. It drew an effective contrast between holidaymakers lazing in the sun on beaches and a side of the country less touted by tourist boards - children describing their torture when in police custody, an old man tending an unmarked grave he thinks contains his son who did not survive a brief stint inside a police station.

Two British holidaymakers went to a local police station to report a theft. When they were summoned back to the station, the police were beating a young girl, accusing her of being responsible for the theft.

A young girl described how she stole a bread roll because she was hungry, and was then arrested by the police. They tortured her hands with electric shocks in an effort to get her to confess to stealing a wallet. She was told she was lucky she was a girl, because if she had been an older woman, they would have applied electrodes to her “other parts”.

The Turkish ambassador to Britain was interviewed and made bare-faced denials to camera about Turkey’s interesting methods of law enforcement. Something similar happened at an Interpol conference in Turkey, where ‘World in Action’ spoke to the head of Turkey’s police, asking him when his subordinates would stop torturing children.

He denied that such things went on in Turkey’s police stations. Incidentally, not long after the Interpol conference, a Turkish fascist wanted by Interpol died in a car crash in a vehicle also containing a senior police officer. The fascist was not under arrest, and the scandal is still reverberating about the Turkish state’s connections with the far right and organised crime.

Andrew MacKay