A grim prison in Turkey has become renowned for cruel conditions and abuse of inmates including incidents of a dog biting the genitals of prisoners.
Diyarbakir Prison is located in Southeastern Turkey, and reports suggest dogs were trained to bite inmates guards were unhappy with.
During a “period of barbarity”, prisoners were treated in particularly harsh ways between 1981 and 1984 when it became a military prison.
A military coup took control of Turkey in 1980 and rounded up dissenting voices against the government.
Words like ‘disco’ and ‘theatre’ were used by guards as substitutes for grim acts of torture, beatings and stripping inmates naked.
It is claimed guard Captain Esat Oktay Yıldıran’s dog ‘Jo’, a German Shepherd, was trained to bite the genitals of inmates after they were stripped.
More awful reports say that some inmates were forced to rape each other, while there were also threats of sexual violence against family members.
Former mayor of Diyarbakir Mehdi Zana said: “When a new prisoner arrived at the prison, Captain Esat met him at the entrance and then turned to a guard and said, ‘Prepare him a bath; then take him to the dormitory.’ This was a ritual.
“So almost twenty guards accompanied the prisoner. He received a good welcoming thrashing, and then he was dragged, unconscious, to the ‘bath,’ a bathtub full of s**t in which they left him for a few hours.”
Some members of the prisoners were part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and set themselves on fire inside the prison in protest. Diyarbakir is considered the capital of Turkish Kurdistan.
