Fatos Pinar Turker, general manager of Istanbul Municipality’s Medya media and communications unit, raised allegations of police station strip searches during a court hearing held at Silivri Prison, according to local media reports.

Turkey is not unfamiliar with claims of torture by law enforcement, including strip searches. Typically, files on such claims are either closed or never progressed in the first place.

However, allegations made by defendants in the ongoing Istanbul Municipality trial, one of whom is the country’s most popular politician, Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, tend to catch the media’s attention, unlike others that pass by unnoticed.

Torture, threats

In addition to the torture allegations heard at the trial, the fact that most of the defendants claim to have been subjected to threats made by prosecutors is notable.

The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) case features as many as 414 defendants, including 68 held in pre-trial detention.

The hearings are held all day long throughout working hours every day. Local journalist Fatos Erdogan (@puleragema) reports almost all statements from the courtroom, at least  when she is not busy attending hearings in which she is being tried over some news reports.

June 18 brought the 53rd day of the IBB hearings since they began at Silivri Prison’s courtroom on March 9. The court has advised that the target duration of the entire trial is up to 4,600 days (13 years).

Designed solely “to break a person's dignity”

Turker took the stand on June 9, the 47th day of the trial. In a statement, she gave an account of her pre-trial detention, alleging systemic physical humiliation and psychological coercion by police and judicial figures trying to force a confession.

She alleged that she was subjected to an invasive strip-search by police officers at Vatan police headquarters in Istanbul, designed “solely to break a person's dignity”.

Traumatic home raid

Turker began her statement with an account of the police raid on her home. Particularly for minors, the Turkish police’s approach to their infamous home raids is seriously traumatic.

Said Turker: “It was between 5:30 and 6:00 am. As I mentioned, I live alone with my two daughters. It was very bizarre. The police arrived at the house.

“My children were crying, and I said, ‘Let me give them some water.’ They said, ‘No.’ My youngest daughter was supposed to go to school, but they kept saying, ‘No, nobody moves, do not tamper with evidence.’”

She added: “There was a female officer there who, by the end of things, was crying along with my daughters.”

And she recalled: “So we were just standing there in the middle of the living room in our pyjamas. Naturally, my daughters were crying and wanted to hug me. The officer said ‘absolutely no one is to touch another.’”

Homicide squad

Turker continued: “I said, ‘Didn’t you come here for financial crimes? What evidence could we possibly destroy?’ The officer replied, ‘We are from the homicide squad.

“When he said that, my daughters began screaming and crying hysterically. I said, ‘What murder?’ He replied, ‘No, there is an operation under way right now, there are no other police left, so they sent us.’”

“As to the issue of tampering with evidence, I truly could not even give my child a glass of water. It felt like a theatre piece or a nightmare,” she added.

Waved goodbye 15 months ago

Turker then addressed how the police said they were to take her for a “medical check”. “That was the last time I saw my youngest daughter off to school,” she said. “Of course, she thought I would return that evening. Fifteen months have passed since then.”

Holding cell

“We entered Vatan, the police headquarters. I truly thought I would never get out of there,” said Turker, continuing with her statement.

“Once you are in there – you have probably never seen a holding cell and I hope to God you never do – you lose all sense of time because it is in the basement and there are no windows at all. There is an immense amount of filth everywhere. I do not know what day it was,” she added.

Strip search

“[Then] a female officer took me to a place that looked like an archive room,” Turker said, adding: “She said ‘strip’. I said ‘what do you mean?’ She put on gloves... She said ‘take off your top’. I took off my top… you are already exposed, what is there to check? But she checked and said, ‘Okay, you can put your top back on’.

“I said, ‘Alright, can I leave?’. She said, ‘No, pull down your sweatpants too’. I pulled them down. Then she said, ‘Your underwear as well’. I asked, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘You will pull them down’. Consequently, I pulled everything down to my ankles. She then said, ‘Now squat down.’”

‘Let them be ashamed, not I’

Turker then turned to the women sitting in the courtroom public gallery and said: “If anyone is uncomfortable, they may leave. I am not ashamed. It feels as though this was done solely to break a person’s honour and pride. Let those who did it be ashamed. I am not ashamed.”

“Expose your genitals”

Turker continued with her account of the strip search, saying: “She told me, ‘Expose your genitals, turn your head, turn your back, bend over,’ and so on. Then she said, ‘Okay’”.

SEGBIS screens

Turker then provided more details about the police station procedures. She said that when they were finished, she and some detained colleagues were transported to Silivri Prison.

“The next day, the hatch on the [cell] door opened and a prison guard said, ‘Fatos’ to me. I said, ‘Yes?’. They said, ‘SEGBIS’ [a reference to the judicial video-conferencing system]. I asked, ‘What is that?’ They said, ‘You are going to appear in court.’ I replied, ‘I was just arrested yesterday, I appeared in court yesterday’. They said, ‘You are appearing again.’”

“I thought to myself,” added Turker, “that they were probably going to execute me or sentence me to life imprisonment immediately. I started crying again. The guard said, ‘Stop, why are you crying about court?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, what is this SEGBIS?’ They explained that it connects you to an online screen.”

Talk with a prosecutor

“I went and sat down. A screen was open in front of me, but it didn’t say, ‘Justice is the foundation of the state’ [a sentence that is on the wall of every courtroom in Turkey]. It was an office. Something felt familiar and I kept wondering what it was. Finally, I noticed a red espresso machine. [It was familiar] because, the prosecutor had offered me coffee from that very machine. It was the prosecutor who took my statement.”

Turker then reflected on how she said: “Your Honor. Mr Prosecutor, I want to ask you something now. Of course, this has absolutely nothing to do with you personally. But since he is your colleague, I ask: Does such a process [as I have experienced] exist [as a legitimate thing] or not?

“He said to me: ‘Well, Fatos, now you cry in front of me like this. What did I tell you? I know what you are. But didn't I tell you that these men would set a trap for you? Why didn’t you speak? You could have given your statement and left.’

“I replied, ‘But, Mr Prosecutor, I told you everything I know’. He said, ‘Look now, go and pack your things. I will send a vehicle for you from the Caglayan courthouse. You will come here, give your statement to me and from here you can go home to your children’.” 

“I said, ‘Mr Prosecutor, I will give a statement again if you wish me to, but let me consult with my lawyer’. Since the person in front of me was a prosecutor, I couldn't just say, ‘No sir’.

“You will never see your children again”

“It then went along like this, with him saying: ‘You are still telling me about a lawyer. With this mindset, you will never see your children again. You are single, aren’t you?’. I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘And you have custody?’. ‘Yes’. ‘Your children are minors, aren't they?’. I said, ‘Yes’. ‘Well, social services will take your children now.’”

Asset freeze measure: “You were the one providing for them, right?’

“They threatened me with my children… He asked, ‘You were the one providing for them, right?’ I said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Look, I have the decision for an asset freeze measure right here in my hand. But I will give you until the end of the working day on Friday, March 28’. The prosecutor said this to me. And it was served that day. He said, ‘Either you come and talk to me, or I will take your property and your assets.’”

A burdened Imamoglu apologises

Imamoglu, who is present at all the hearings as the alleged leader of a gang behind a web of corruption, intervened passionately following the testimonies delivered by Turker and her colleague Ipek Elif Atayman.

“As a man, I apologise to the women here for what they have been forced to endure. The court must remedy this injustice immediately,” he said.

Apologies from Imamoglu to defendants who have just stated what they have endured have become a daily routine at the trial. For the sake of building up accusations about a so-called “octopus-like” criminal network, prosecutors have had to pull in numerous people. The jailed mayor can come to feel that he bears the sole responsibility for their experiences.