Intellectuals Criticize the F-Type Prison

A group of intellectuals and artists have prepared a text, and are collecting signatures against the isolation in Turkey's maximum-security F-type prisons. The group also called on the Justice Minister Aysel Celikel to "solve the problem."

The text also asks the political parties about what they will do to "end isolation and insularity in the F-type prisons."

Journalists Oral Calislar and Ragip Zarakolu, novelist Vedat Turkali, poet Arif Damar, Sanar Yurdatapan from the Initiative for Freedom of Thought, artists Ilkay Akkaya, Nurettin Gulec, Vedat Baran and Inan Altin held a press conference at the Nazim Culture Foundation last week and put forward for signatures a text they prepared against isolation.

Esber Yagmurdereli, who made a statement on behalf of the group, said that after September 12, prisons became one of the main centers of societal opposition. "For that reason, they had to, first of all, bring the prisons under discipline," said Yagmurdereli. "And as an outcome of this policy, the F-type prison system came on the agenda."

Reminding the words of minister Turk

Yagmurdereli highlighted that about 10 thousand people in Turkey were in prisons as "political convicts."

"These people are referred to as 'terrorists' by the state," said Yagmurdereli.

"People who show banners, who write on the walls are sentenced to 18 years in prison. But all these decisions breach the international law standards. Turkey continues to be the country with the highest number of political convicts in prison," he said.

"The justice minister of the time had said that F-type prisons would not be places of isolation," continued Yagmurdereli. "He also said he would postpone the implementation. However, after death strikes began in prisons, there was an operation on December 19, and 32 people were killed. Including the death strikers who died in the following months, the total number of people who lost their lives because of F-type prisons is 97," Yagmurdereli said.

Question for parties

After Yagmurdereli's speech, poet Arif Damar read the text that was offered for signatures.

The text reminded what the justice minister of the time, Hikmet Sami Turk, had said: "There will not be isolation in these places," Turk had stated. The text also stressed that a group of protestors were still on death strikes.

The intellectuals also called on Justice Minister Aysel Celikel to find a solution for the problem. The text also questioned the political parties: "We are asking the ones who promise freedom to this country. What will you do to end isolation and insularity in F-type prisons?" (BB/NK/EA/NM)