The Fascist Practices in Turkish Prisons

We hereby share an unofficial translation of a recent article published by Avrupa Haber.

Fascism is massacre, fascism is blood and tears, fascism is hunger and poverty, fascism is prison, torture, and isolation. Fascism is banning the sun and daylight in cold, dark cells.

The Turkish state is building high-security prisons to disrupt the organized life of revolutionary prisoners in prisons. In 2000, it tortured hundreds of revolutionaries by transfering them to F-type prisons. After the F-types, S-T-Y-type prisons became the new tools of fascism’s attack to intimidate revolutionaries and the people. The cells in these prisons are no different from a well. They are wells where you can take at most five steps, where air and sunlight do not enter. Yes, there is a window, but behind the window are iron bars, and behind the bars are wires. In these wells, the sky, clouds, the sound of birds, human faces, and human voices are forbidden.

F-S-Y-T type prisons are coffins created by fascism for revolutionaries, artists, and intellectuals. Fascism wants to bury our thoughts in these dark wells.

Fifteen prisoners are on hunger strike against this inhumane practice, many of them for nearly a year.

The state calls these “high security,” but this system was established not to protect people, but to silence them. The walls were built not for security, but to imprison thought.

Turkey has been using the same method for years. It declares those who demand justice a threat, those who seek equality criminals, and those who speak of freedom enemies. It attacks revolutionaries and socialists the most. Because they refuse to stop questioning, they refuse to bow down. What that means is that there are cells ready for everyone who refuses to surrender.

These prisons destroy not only people but also human rights. The right to life, freedom of expression, dignity—all are suffocated within these concrete walls. Torture may be banned, but here the system itself has become torture. This is Turkey. The reality you don’t want to see, the truth you fear to hear. If people are resisting with hunger strikes for their ideas, there is no justice there, and where there is no justice, no one’s breath lasts long. Let us stand with the just resistance against fascism!

Aris C

ATİGF Youth Activist