Letter by our Vice Co-Chair Hisyar Özsoy on Legal and Prison Conditions of HDP Co-chairs and deputies:
This letter is to inform you about Turkish government’s policies of isolation and judicial terror imposed on the HDP’s co-chairs and eight MPs since their unlawful arrest on November 4 and 7, 2016.
Currently, our co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş and MP Abdullah Zeydan are in Edirne F-Type Prison; co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ, MPs Gülser Yıldırım and Ferhat Encü in Kandira F-Type Prison No I; MPs Nihat Akdoğan, Selma Irmak, Leyla Birlik, and Nursel Aydoğan in Silivri F-type Prison No 9; and Deputy Chair of HDP’s Parliamentary Group Idris Baluken in Kandira F-Type Prison No II. They all are kept under conditions of solitary confinement in cells originally built for housing three inmates.
We note with particular immediate concern that:
I. Mr Demirtaş is held under conditions of solitary confinement in Edirne F-Type Prison. This prisonis located almost one thousand miles away from Mr Demirtaş’ place of trial and his family.We have learned that Mr Demirtaş is held captive here in a cell located in the prison block allocated for members of outlawed jihadist organizations (ISIS and al-Qaida)and the mafia. Mr Demirtaş’ housing amidst such prisoners is at best irresponsible and at worst a deliberate provocation of the prison administration and the Ministry of Justice that puts into risk his life and personal safety. Mr Demirtaş’s request to be transferred to another prison block was rejected. Mr Demirtaş also requested to share the same prison cell with HDP MP Abdullah Zeydan. This request was rejected, too. Mr Demirtaş and Mr Zeydan have not been allowed to even see each other “for security reasons” despite the fact that they are in the same prison block since their arrest. We demand the Turkish government to immediately transfer, as a first measure, Mr Demirtaş to a more secure prison block and end the solitary confinement imposed on him, other HDP MPs as well as many of the arrested Kurdish mayors.
II. Our co-chairs and MPs’ right to legal counsel is regularly violated.Our MPs’ access to legal representation has been hindered from the beginning with notes of confidentiality on prosecutorial investigations and their transfer to remote high security prisons. This has been furthered in prisons with a recent state of emergency legislation; Article 6/d of Government Decree No 667 (dated 23 July 2016).
This article allows for the audio or visual recording of attorney-client conversations, physical surveillance of attorney-client visits by a prison guard, and seizure of documents exchanged between attorneys and clients, in case it is deliberated that “the attorney-client visit poses a risk to public security or the security of the execution institution [or] if there is a possibility the suspect may direct, manipulate, give orders or pass encrypted messages to a terror or crime organization.”
Recently, Diyarbakir Office of the Public Prosecutor has ordered the implementation of this article for attorney visits to our co-chairs Mr Demirtaş and Ms Yüksekdağ. On November 14, Attorney Aysel Tugluk’s visit to her client Mr Demirtaş was voice-recorded. On the same day Mr Demirtaş’s request to relay his handwritten notes of seventeen pages to Ms Tugluk was refused with the argument that the notes were “not related to his defense¬¬.” The notes included Mr Demirtaş’s first messages to the HDP’s parliamentary group. Three weeks later the notes were delivered to the HDP, but with significant portions of them being censored (erased) by prison administration. On November 16, a prison guard accompanied and video-recorded Ms. Yüksekdağ’s meeting with her attorney Sezin Ucar. Attorney Ucar’s notes were seized by the prison administration before her departure. Other HDP deputies are subjected to the same practices. Their meetings with lawyers are physically observedby an officer and recorded, and the documents they give to their lawyers as well as the notes the lawyers take during the meetings are confiscated or censored. These unlawful practices categorically conflict with the “duty of confidentiality” and “attorney-client privilege” recognized by the Turkish and international law, and they violate the principle of “presumption of innocence.”
III. The increasing criminalization and harassment of our defense attorneys further undermines our deputies’ right to defense.These practices run in parallel with a more coordinated assault of the Erdoğan-AKP government on our attorneys. On October 29, the government passed a decree (No 675) that prevents attorneys who have pending criminal investigations with “terror-related charges” from delivering defense services. Whereas anybody critical of President Erdoğan can be criminalized in today’s Turkey with charges of supporting “terrorism,” this decree clearly targets the right to defense of both lawyers and their clients. On November 11,the government banned the activities of two lawyers associations–the Association of Libertarian Jurists (ÖHD) and Contemporary Lawyers Association (ÇHD)¬– whose members represent virtually all of the HDP deputies, executives, and members. Soon afterwards, two of Mr Demirtaş’s defense attorneys, Levent Piskin and Cahir Kirkazak, both members of ÖHD, were detained in connection with a phone conversation they had regarding the request of a German magazine to publish a handwritten message by Mr Demirtaş. While the pro-government press unleashed conspiratorial and terrorizing smear campaign against Piskin and Kirkazak that they were trying to get from Mr. Demirtaş “a propaganda letter to be distributed in Europe,” the court put both attorneys under probation and banned them from traveling abroad. On December 2,Sevda Çelik Özbingöl, the defense attorney of Ms Yüksekdağ, was also detained. It is very likely that such targeting of our attorneys will increase in the coming weeks, rendering the possibilities of legal defense even more precarious for our deputies and their representatives.
IV. Many of our deputies have applied to the Ministry of Justice to get permission for prison visits, but they were denied without any explanation.So far only two HDP MPs were allowed to visit our co-chairs and deputies in prisons, despite the fact that deputies of Republican People’s Party (CHP) could visit them. In addition, several foreign delegations composed of parliamentarians or representatives of political parties as well as a delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have asked the Ministry of Justice for permission to visit our co-chairs. The Ministry has refused these requests. This attitude of the Ministry is totally illegal, arbitrary, and politically motivated. The government is committed to severe all the ties of our co-chairs and deputies with the world outside. This is another unacceptable form of isolation imposed on our co-chairs and deputies.
V. Most recently, on December 1, Mr Demirtaş wrote two separate two-page letters to Mr Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of Council of Europe, and Mr Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, about his arrest and his legal and prison conditions. In his letters Mr Demirtaş described his prison conditions, and stated that the prison administration’s isolating him from the outside world had to be considered as “torture.” Both of these letters were confiscated by the prison administration with the excuse that the entirety of letters “included lies and misinformation that may endanger the security of the institution [the prison] and cause panic among people and institutions.”
It is clear that both the prison administration and the Ministry of Justice choose to disregard the fact that our co-chairs and deputies are not convicts and thatuntil they are convicted they have the legal right to join legislative activities, express their ideas freely, and fulfill their duties as MPs. Their parliamentary immunities were lifted only for specific investigations, so they still do keep their parliamentary immunity and has every right to involve in parliamentary activities and express their political views. The prison administration has been subjecting our co-chairs and deputies to the rules and regulations that are even harsher that those applied to convicted people.
Our co-chairs and deputies should be immediately released, since the lifting of their parliamentary immunities and their arrests are in violation of both the Turkish Constitution and the international law. Furthermore, we view the politics of isolation imposed on our co-chairs and deputies as torture. We hereby invite the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, the Human Rights Committee of the European Parliament, the human rights officers of the European External Action Service, and the Human Rights Committee of the International Parliamentary Union to visit our co-chairs and deputies in prison, document their legal and prison conditions,remind the Turkish authorities of their obligations under the international human rights conventions of which Turkey is a signatory party, demand the end of politics of isolation imposed on them, and, most importantly, urge the Turkish Government for their immediate release.
Hişyar Özsoy, Ph.D.
HDP Vice Co-Chair, Bingöl Deputy
8 December 2016