Exposing torture and helping victims seek justice has been a major field of activity for Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) over the past three decades. The group has filed countless lawsuits, particularly against police officers in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast. But one application the IHD received in late April was nothing like what it was accustomed to. The alleged victims of torture were police officers themselves. Families and lawyers reached out to the IHD through email and social media to convey the allegations.
On April 26, Turkey witnessed the largest single purge in the police since the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, which the government blames on US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers, who have been entrenched mostly in the police and the judiciary. Some 9,000 police officers were suspended from office, while more than a thousand people, including police, teachers and other public servants, were detained. The torture allegations relayed to the IHD pertained to this latest wave of the crackdown.