2024 United Nations Committee against Torture’s concluding observations on Türkiye

The UN Committee against Torture released its concluding observations, CAT/C/TUR/CO/5, on Türkiye’s fifth Periodic report, after a two days’ dialogue held on 17 and 18 July 2024.

While Türkiye pretends applying a “0 tolerance policy” regarding torture and ill-treatment, the Committee expressed concerns

“about allegations that torture and ill-treatment continue to occur in the State party in a generalized manner, notably in detention centres, including allegations of beatings and sexual assault and harassment by law enforcement and intelligence officers and of the use of electric shocks and waterboarding in some cases. The Committee is particularly concerned about increases in allegations of torture and ill-treatment following the attempted coup in 2016, including in order to extract confessions, following earthquakes in the south-east of the country in 2023 and in the context of counter-terrorism operations” (para. 20).

The Committee also devoted a full paragraph to “renditions and extraditions”, an issue IAHRAG has been consistent reporting to the Committee, this later expressing

“concern in response to allegations regarding a systematic practice of State-sponsored extraterritorial abductions and forcible returns of individuals supposedly associated with the Hizmet/Gülen movement in coordination with authorities in Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Lebanon and Pakistan, as well as with authorities in Kosovo, as previously raised by several special procedure mandate holders. Such abductions are alleged to have taken place with the involvement of the National Intelligence Organization (Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı) and to entail human rights violations such as enforced disappearance and other forms of torture and ill-treatment” (para. 26).

With harsh and degrading prison conditions, aggravated life imprisonment with no prospect of release, incommunicado detention, impunity for perpetrators, intimidation and judicial harassment of victims, forced rendition, foreign abductions and enforced disappearances, excessive use of force by law enforcement authorities, significant deterioration of judicial independence, Türkiye requires urgent reforms, including amendment of counter-terrorism laws, to really ensure a “0 tolerance policy” on torture.