Turkey’s prisons authority hits back at women’s strip search accounts

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkey’s prisons and detention authority has defended its controversial use of strip searching – or what it calls a “detailed search” – at its jails, calling it a “necessary” and “exceptional” practice to prevent the smuggling of forbidden substances or objects into prisons. 

The authority’s defence of its use of strip searches follows nationwide uproar over its alleged use, particularly on women.

“Detailed searches in penitentiary institutions is an exceptional practice and is a precautionary procedure both accepted by international organizations and implemented by many countries,”  read a statement from Turkey’s Directorate General of Prisons and Detention Houses in a statement released on Monday.

The body, which is part of the justice ministry, added that the search is typically done on “those who are convicted or imprisoned for drug and terrorist crimes and want to abuse their own bodies. This can be prevented by this [search] method.”

Calling it a “detailed search” rather than what opponents call a “strip search,” the institution said they first make prisoners take off the clothes they are wearing on the upper half of their body, then their lower half after getting their top half dressed.

The statement makes no reference to prison visitors, who have also accused prison staff of strip searching them.

Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, parliamentarian for the pro-Kurdish Democratic Peoples’ Party (HDP) was the first person to report the alleged strip searching of prisoners and members of their families visiting them in jail. 

“For the last few days, I have been publishing the messages I have received regarding the strip search incidents. This degrading treatment should end immediately,” Gergerlioglu said in a tweet on December 16. “The people who were subjected to this treatment cannot speak of it, even to their immediate family.”

The parliamentarian, who is also a member of Turkish parliament’s human rights committee, has logged several cases of strip searches of women, including one of a women who was allegedly forcibly strip searched two years ago while on her period.

“Even though the prisoner told them that she was on her period, she was forced to strip naked. As if that wasn’t enough, she was treated with disgust,” the parliamentarian said in another December 16 tweet.

A day after the tweets, Gergerlioglu’s claims were denied by Ozlem Zengin, deputy head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) bloc in parliament.

“No parliamentarian terrorizes parliament as much as Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu. I categorically do not believe that strip searches exist in Turkey. Such a thing does not exist,” she told the Turkish service of Euronews.

Women speak up

In the following days, several women shared videos on Twitter in which they recounted that they had been the victims of strip searches and harassment. 

One mother told of her disabled seven-year-old daughter being forced to take off her clothes when they were visiting the girl’s jailed father in Samsun province’s Bafra Closed Prison in 2018, for the first time since his arrest.

Lawyer Mucella Yapici is another woman who spoke up against the “degrading” practice in prison.

“… [Y]ou subjected me to the degrading strip search at the age of 60. I have begun publicizing this so that other women do not experience it. The case that I open still remains open,” she said in response the AKP lawmaker’s denial.
 
Betul Alpay, a 26-year-old lawyer, said she was strip searched upon admission to the Aegean Mugla Prison in November 2017 as a detainee.

"They asked me to take off my underwear. This was the worst sentence I heard that day," Alpay said in a video published on December 18. "I had to do what they wanted, so I took off my underwear, sitting and standing back up three times."

Far from new

Murat Melet, head of the Human Rights Association (IHD) office in Van province, told Rudaw on Monday that strip searches are nothing new.

“Actually, this thing is totally true. However, it did not emerge just now or recently, but more than ten years ago. Such a thing exists in prisons,” he said.

His office has been handling such cases for seven years, he said.

“It’s not just women who are subjected to this, men are too.  When people are newly jailed, they will be strip searched. If someone refuses to undergo this… they will be beaten.”

Strip search in law

The Turkish prisons and detention authority cited United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) and European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) as well as local laws to defend its use of strip searches on prisoners.

However, international guidelines condemn the use of strip searches with the intention of humiliating or harassing detainees.

“Searches shall not be used to harass, intimidate or unnecessarily intrude upon a prisoner’s privacy. For the purpose of accountability, the prison administration shall keep appropriate records of searches, in particular strip and body cavity searches and searches of cells, as well as the reasons for the searches, the identities of those who conducted them and any results of the searches,” reads the UN rules.

The ECHR says that “strip searches may be necessary on occasion to ensure prison security or to prevent disorder or crime.” 

“However, even single instances of strip searching could amount to degrading treatment in view of the manner in which the strip search was carried out, the possibility that its aim was to humiliate and debase and where there was no justification for it,” it adds. 

Ozgur Ozel, deputy chairman for Turkish main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), called on the Turkish parliamentary human rights committee “to save our country from this shame that's being reported and is part of the legislation.”