F-Type-Prisons or in its official title F-type High Security Closed Institutions for the Execution of Sentences (F tipi cezaevi / F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu) are called high-security prisons according to the Turkish Law 5275 on the Execution of Sentences.
The F-type prisons were erected to accommodate imprisoned members of armed organizations. People convicted of drug offences or organized crimes are also placed in these prisons, as well as those sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment.[1] Aggravated life imprisonment (ağırlaştırılmış müebbet hapis cezası) replaced the death penalty that was abolished in 2002[2] and according to Article 47 of the Turkish Penal Code (TPC) should in principle last until the death of the convicted person.
Contents |
Before F-type prisons were built, prisoners in Turkey were held in wards (dormitories) with 50 or more prisoners. In April 1991, the Turkish parliament enacted the Anti-Terror-Law (ATL), which required that "The sentences of those convicted under the provisions of this law will be served in special penal institutions built on a system of cells constructed for one or three people ... Convicted prisoners will not be permitted contact or communication with other convicted prisoners."[3]
This law was revised in Article 1 of Law 4666 of 1 May 2001. On 29 June 2006 Article 16 of the Anti-Terror-Law was cancelled, since other provisions had been enacted.
The first high security prison was created by remodeling an existing prison that was built in 1987 in Eskişehir, and replacing wards with cells. The prison was reopened in February 1991. This prison did not carry the title of Type F, but was called a "special type prison". Prisoners criticized the cell system as [being like a] "coffin" (tabutluk). In November 1991, 206 political prisoners were transferred to Eskişehir. Justice Minister Seyfi Oktay and the State Minister responsible for Human Rights, Mehmet Kahraman visited the prison on November 22nd, 1991, accompanied by representatives of the Human Rights Association (HRA), the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT) and the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and listened to allegations of torture and ill-treatment. Two days later the Council of Ministers decided to close the prison again.[4] In October 1995, the prison was reopened. The attempt of 1996 to transfer all prisoners on trial in Istanbul under the Anti-Terror-Law to Eskişehir failed, after 12 prisoners had died during a hunger strike declared to be a fast to death.[5]
On invitation of the Turkish Government the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) visited the prison in Eskişehir in August 1996. It had little to criticize and found the prisoners' term of "coffin cells" far from reality.[6]
In mid-2000, the discussion on F-type prisons got harsher. The then Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Türk was determined to shift towards the "cell system".[7] Reacting against the plans to be transferred to the new prison, where they presumably would be held in isolation, inmates of the prisons in Bayrampaşa, Bartın, Çankırı, Çanakkale, Aydın, Bursa, Uşak, Malatya, Niğde, Buca, Ankara Central Closed Prison, Konya-Ermenek, Nevşehir, Gebze and Ceyhan started a hunger strike on October 26th, 2000. Until November 19th, 2000, a total of 816 prisoner in 18 prisons had joined the hunger strike and declared that they would turn their action into a "death fast".[8]
The compromise Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Türk offered on 9 December 2000 (no immediate transfers to F-type prison and a loosening of Article 16 in Law 3713) was not sufficient for the prisoners, so negotiations of well known personalities including Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (not at the time though) failed. On 19 December 2000 Turkish security forces stormed 20 prisons in an action named "Operation Return to Life". 30 prisoners and two soldiers were killed.[9]
The transfers to the F-type prisons started immediately after the operation on the prisons. On 21 December 2000 the Ministry of Justice announced that 524 prisoners had been transferred to the F-type prisons in Edirne, Kocaeli and Sincan.[10] But this was not the end of the prisoners' actions. On 3 January 2001, the Justice Minister announced that 1118 inmates and detainees from 41 prisons were on indefinite hunger strikes, while 395 were on death fasts.[9]
During the ongoing fast to death action, more and more prisoners died. At the end of 2001 the chairs of Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara Bar Association suggested a solution called "three doors, three locks" (üç kapı, üç kılıt).[11] This would have enabled nine prisoners (three each in three rooms) to get together during the day. While the prisoners announced that they would stop their action, if the proposal was accepted the Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Türk declared the proposal unacceptable, and made the counter offer that 10 prisoners could come together for 5 hours a week.
In May 2002 Hüsnü Öndül, chair of the HRA called on the Justice Minister to enter an intensified dialogue and appealed to the prisoners to stop the senseless deaths. On 28 May prisoners of almost all groups involved in the hunger strike action ended the death fast. Only the DHKP-C continued the fast.
Behiç Aşçı, lawyer in Istanbul, joined the fasten to death action in 2006. When his health deteriorated, public attention increased. At the end of the year Bülent Arınç, at the time chairing the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, met with relatives of Aşçı and representatives of NGOs. He said that the house representing the nation could not stay insensitive on a subject in which a lawyer insisted risking his life and indicated that the Ministry of Justice and the government would act.[12]
Behiç Aşçı and two prisoners continuing the action declared that they would disrupt their action, after they had read Decree 45/1 of the Ministry of Justice dated 22 January 2007.[13] This decree, which included multiple provisions, allowed that 10 prisoners in the F-type prisons may come together for 10 hours per week (previously it had been five hours per week).
In and outside prison a total of 122 people died in connection with actions against isolation in F-type prisons. Many more were suffering from serious diseases such as the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. In the Annual Report 2006 the HRFT presented the following figures on deaths during the fasten to death action:
| Number | Cause of death |
|---|---|
| 32 | operation "Return to Life" |
| 48 | death fastening in prison |
| 13 | continued death fastening after release |
| 3 | death during treatment |
| 7 | relatives fastening to death |
| 5 | police action again solidarity hunger strikes |
| 14 | protesters setting themselves on fire |
One group protested by setting themselves on fire happened in Germany. There are another 12 victims of suicidal attacks said to have been conducted as a protest against the F-type prisons.
The Human Rights Foundation of Turkey treated 593 former prisoners suffering from the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.[14] They had either been pardoned by State President Ahmet Necdet Sezer according to Article 104 of the Constitution[15] or temporarily been released according to Article 399 of the Turkish Code of Criminal Procedure (Law 1402).
All F-type prisons are built according to a certain plan.[16] After a visit to Turkey between July 16th-24th, 2000, the CPT presented the following details on the F-type Prison in Sincan (close to Ankara):
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) generally encouraged Turkey to move away from the system of dormitories towards the cell system found in F-type prisons. It also showed an understanding for the security forces in raiding 20 prisons (with 32 victims) and the forcible transfer of prisoners to the F-type prisons.[18] In a report on September 6th, 2006 (on a visit to three prisons between December 7th-14th, 2005) the CPT reiterated that The CPT has never made any criticism of material conditions of detention in F-type prisons... and then continued however, the Committee has repeatedly stressed the need to develop communal activities for prisoners outside their living units. Unfortunately it is very clear from the information gathered in December 2005 that the situation in this regard remains highly unsatisfactory.[19]
In the same report the CPT drew special attention to people sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment, who according to Article 25 of Law 5275 (on the execution of sentences) have to be held in individual cells. The report stated inter alias:
In December 2007, and January 2008, the Association of Contemporary Jurist (Çağdaş Hukukçular Derneği = ÇHD) conducted research on the implementation of Decree 45/1. 25 lawyers went to six prisons and spoke with 120 prisoners. Afterwards they stated that the possibility of 10 hours of conversation per week in groups of 10 prisoners was not observed in the F-type prisons in Tekirdağ (2), Kocaeli (1) and Bolu. In Tekirdağ F-type Prison (1) this right had been cancelled three months ago. In Kandıra F-type Prison (2) the time was limited to 2.5 hours, just like in Kocaeli F-type Prison (2) and Edirne, where this right had been granted a month ago.[20]
The Human Rights Association (HRA) and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT), too, have criticized the isolation in F-type prisons. Details can be found in the HRA report on prisons in the Marmara region or the annual report 2007 (reports in Turkish). Since the English pages of the HRFT are under construction (as of August 2009,) it is possible to search the website of the Democratic Turkey Forum (DTF, the German solidarity group of the HRFT), where a backup system for reports exists since 2008.[21]
Amnesty International (AI) has issued several reports raising concern on isolation and atrocities in F-type prisons. In the Memorandum to the Turkish Government in January 2008, the chapter on F-type prisons stated inter alias:
In the document AI's concerns in Europe and Central Asia (July-December 2006) the organization stated: Six years on from the opening of the F-type prisons, serious complaints about the regime in these prisons continued... Prisoners, their lawyers and human rights groups continued to raise concerns about harsh and arbitrary disciplinary punishments meted out to prisoners in F-type prisons and reported treatment of prisoners which, in some cases, AI would consider as amounting to term cruel, inhuman and degrading.
The New York based organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has issued many reports related to F-type prisons, before and after they were operated. On April 5th, 2001 the report Small Group Isolation in F-type Prisons and the Violent Transfers of Prisoners to Sincan, Kandira, and Edirne Prisons was published. It discussed the background of the transfers of hunger strikers to F-type prisons and repeated earlier concerns such as Many prisoners also believe that they face a greater risk of ill-treatment by prison staff if they are transferred to a cell-based system, where there is only limited communication with other prisoners or with the outside world. One year before, on May 24th, 2000, HRW had published the report Small Group Isolation in Turkish Prisons: An Avoidable Disaster. The organization expressed two primary concerns: (1) to the extent the cell-based system is accompanied by an isolation regime that provides prisoners with no access to educational or recreational activities or other sources of mental stimulation, the system may itself amount to ill-treatment, and (2) a regime of isolation that severely limits access to other inmates as well as the outside world may also increase the risk of ill-treatment of prisoners by prison staff.
This section uses details from the German version on the subject
On 19 July 2007 Kırıkkale F-type Prison was opened as the 13th F-type prison. The prison on the island İmralı where Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the Kurdish Workers' Party PKK is the only inmate is not exactly an F-type prison (only 9 instead of 368 inmates), but also a high security prison. Answering a parliamentarian request Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin stated in August 2009 that the reconstruction of the prison to a closed high security institution for the execution of sentences had been finished. He added that another eight prisoners would be taken there, but was unable to say who the prisoners would be.[22]
| Name (in Turkish) | Location | Website (Turkish) |
|---|---|---|
| Adana F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Adana | http://www.adanafcik.adalet.gov.tr/ |
| Ankara 1 No’lu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Ankara | http://www.ankaraf1.adalet.gov.tr/ |
| Ankara 2 No’lu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Ankara | http://www.ankaraf2.gov.tr/ |
| Bolu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Bolu | http://www.bolufcik.adalet.gov.tr/ |
| Edirne F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Edirne | http://www.edirne.adalet.gov.tr/ftipi.html |
| İzmir 1 No’lu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | İzmir | http://www.izmirf1.adalet.gov.tr/ |
| İzmir 2 No’lu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | İzmir | http://www.izmirf2.adalet.gov.tr/ |
| Kırıkkale F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Kırıkkale | http://www.kirikkalefcik.adalet.gov.tr/ (under construction) |
| Kocaeli 1 No’lu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Kandıra / Kocaeli | http://www.kocaelif1.adalet.gov.tr/ |
| Kocaeli 2 No’lu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Kandıra / Kocaeli | http://www.kocaelif2.adalet.gov.tr/ (under construction) |
| Tekirdağ 1 No’lu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Tekirdağ | no website yet |
| Tekirdağ 2 No’lu F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Tekirdağ | http://www.tekirdag2fkapalicik.gov.tr/index.html |
| Van F Tipi Yüksek Güvenlikli Kapalı Ceza İnfaz Kurumu | Van | http://www.vanfcik.adalet.gov.tr/ |