Türkiye to convert notorious prison of 1980s into museum

The government will convert the Diyarbakır Prison, associated with cruel torture in the aftermath of the 1980 coup, to a museum, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during a visit to the city on Sunday (October 23).

The old prison, where 270 prisoners were serving their time, was "emptied" in one day, just before the visit of government officials.

During a ceremony at the prison, Bekir Bozdağ, the minister of Justice, handed over the prison to the Minister of Culture and Tourism Nuri Ersoy.

Ersoy and Bozdağ (Photo: AA)

In a speech, Erdoğan said, "The building of Diyarbakır prison which was the subject of many pains and cruelties in the past will now serve both as a memory and also a facility for different kinds of activities ... With its library, with its venues for arts and performances, this prison is disappearing."

Erdoğan had announced before, during his visit to Diyarbakır in July 2021, that the prison would be converted into a "cultural center."

He said, "Today I want to give you the good news. Diyarbakır prison which was associated in the past for a long time with cruelty, torture and inhumane treatment of people will be emptied soon and we will be giving it to your service as a cultural center. Our Ministry of Justice is making the necessary preparations. Thus we will be demolishing a bad memory in the recollection of Diyarbakır."

Criticism

Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Mithad Sancar criticized the move in a speech in the parliament on October 25. "You are closing the Diyarbakır prison but you have turned the whole country into a prison," he told his party's parliamentary group.

"They are boasting about closing the Diyarbakır prison. But this government is continuing the same logic that was behind building that prison and what people lived through there. You cannot confront the past by closing a prison, you are trying to deceive the people."

Addressing Minister Bozdağ, HDP deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu said, "You have only closed yesterday's prison. In the period of your ministry and your government, you have set records in opening prisons. The sick, the pregnant, the puerpera, the children were in prison in your period."

There have long been demands to convert the prison into a museum to shed light on the cruel history of the prison.

History of Diyarbakır Prison

Diyarbakır Prison was opened in May 1980. After the military coup of September 12, 1980, the prison was taken over by the military administration ruling the country at the time and named the Martial Law Military Prison.

Named Diyarbakır Military Prison No. 5, it was known for the cruelty, torture, and inhumane treatment of prisoners and also the resistance of the political prisoners. Both the torture and the resistance have been described in many novels, documentaries, and films.

There have been international initiatives questioning the practices in Diyarbakır prison and the Presidency of Turkish General Staff had to issue a statement on April 2, 1984, which stated that there had been 53 deaths in Diyarbakır prison, that 14 people hanged or burnt themselves, that 23 died due to various illnesses, that 7 died due to hunger strike and 7 due to torture and that there was no torture except for individual cases.

There was widespread repression, torture, and intimidation in all prisons of Türkiye during the period of the September 12 coup. However, in Diyarbakır Military Prison No. 5 there was also humiliation towards prisoners' ethnic identities and languages.

Thousands of prisoners, most of them Kurdish were maltreated, wounded physically or psychologically, tens of them killed and hundreds crippled.

Those who served their time in this prison in the 1980-84 period have many times narrated that this prison served as a collection and torture camp.

Nevertheless, nobody responsible for the cruelty and torture in this prison has stood trial or investigation.

During the "resolution process," more than a thousand people who were in this prison as political prisoners filed criminal complaints collectively with the initiative of the "Committee for Investigating the Reality of Diyarbakır Military Prison No. 5 and for Justice." Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation into the oppression, torture, and deaths.

However the "resolution process" was terminated. Then the Chief prosecutor who opened the investigation was appointed to another city and the investigation was terminated due to statute of limitations, as in many other investigations. (PE)