On October 31, Solidarity with OTHERS organized a demonstration in front of the European Parliament in Brussels to commemorate Mustafa Kabakçıoğlu, Turkish ex-police officer and political prisoner who lost his life behind bars in northeastern Turkey in late August.
The event featured a white plastic chair, which represented the one on which Kabakçıoğlu’s lifeless body was found in an isolation cell of the prison facility where he was held after showing symptoms of Covid-19.
The participants told Kabakçıoğlu’s story, condemned the widespread human rights abuses in Turkey’s prisons as well as the political control over the criminal justice system.
OUR STATEMENT
First of all, we condemn the terrorist attack that took place in the French city of Nice and we express our solidarity with the families of the victims as well as the French people against all forms of radicalism and terrorist acts.
We are here today to commemorate Mustafa Kabakçıoğlu, a former police officer who recently died behind bars as one of Turkey’s tens of thousands of political prisoners.
On August 29, he was found dead in the isolation cell of a prison in northeastern Turkey. His last pictures showing his lifeless body sitting on a white plastic chair have profoundly shocked anyone with a conscience.
He was sent there after showing symptoms of Covid-19. The Turkish authorities claim that they had offered to hospitalize him and that he had declined. However, they have not been able to produce his written request to remain in prison. Instead, the authorities started going after social media users for raising the issue which, in today’s Turkey, typically amounts to an admission of guilt.
Another dimension of the scandal was that Kabakçıoğlu was one of tens of thousands of people who, following a coup attempt in July 2016, were locked up based on bogus indictments and sham trials. He was convicted of terrorism based on absurd evidence such as his donations to a legal charity organization, his use of an open mobile messaging app, and someone’s testimony denouncing him as an alleged member of the Gülen movement.
Back in April this year, amid the spread of Covid-19 in Turkey, the Turkish government passed legislation to ease the country’s notoriously overcrowded prisons. This early release law discriminated against political prisoners under the guise of excluding those imprisoned for terrorism. A sinister trick to further persecute dissidents, former public sector workers, politicians, academics, journalists and people from all walks of life, with no record of violence.
Had the law included those with no history of violent acts, Kabakçıoğlu, who was serving the final months of his prison sentence that would come to a close in March 2021, would have been released before he died.
Kabakçıoğlu’s story is the epitome of everything that is wrong with today’s Turkey: unhygienic prison conditions, lack of access to medical treatment, systematic cover-up of gross negligence or wilful misconduct by authorities, and above all, a broken justice system and an unending campaign led by the government to annihilate people that it perceives as a threat.
It is unacceptable that all of this is happening in a country that the European Union continues to consider a candidate for membership in the Union and a close partner to cooperate with.
That is why we have gathered at the European Parliament to call for an end to the deadly political persecution in Turkey and for the immediate release of all political prisoners who are faced with a grave risk threatening their very right to life.
