For the first time, the witnesses for international media tell how they were robbed and tortured in a secret place. Others are provided with security services from abroad. A joint media review shows the darkest sides of Turkey's hunt for supporters of alleged coupons.

For the first time, the witnesses for international media tell how they were robbed and tortured in a secret place. Others are provided with security services from abroad. A joint media review shows the darkest sides of Turkey's hunt for supporters of alleged coupons.



It's a regular day in 2017. "Tolga" has left her daughter in school and walks along a street in the capital of Ankara. It takes five seconds to kidnap and take him away in a black van, "he says.
A short drive follows. Sack over the head, arms and legs tied. Once in a cell, Tolga is beaten with pinks and given electric shocks. The guards put a dildo in his hand: "You know what we're going to do with it."
Tolga is interrogated and tortured two to three times a day. "We will do this to your wife and your parents as well. Your children will be looking at, "says his plagoandar.
Tolga, who really has a different name, tells in detail his story for a group of journalists, somewhere in Europe. Nine international media, among them TT, have in a joint review coordinated by the German editorial board Correctiv looked closer at how the Turkish state chases followers of the pastor Fethullah Gülen. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames them for the coup trial against him on July 15, 2016. "
Witnesses: Secret Torture Prisons in Turkey
For the first time, the witnesses for international media tell how they were robbed and tortured in a secret place. Others are provided with security services from abroad. A joint media review shows the darkest sides of Turkey's hunt for supporters of alleged coupons.
It's a regular day in 2017. "Tolga" has left her daughter in school and walks along a street in the capital of Ankara. It takes five seconds to kidnap and take him away in a black van, "he says.
A short drive follows. Sack over the head, arms and legs tied. Once in a cell, Tolga is beaten with pinks and given electric shocks. The guards put a dildo in his hand: "You know what we're going to do with it."
Tolga is interrogated and tortured two to three times a day. "We will do this to your wife and your parents as well. Your children will be looking at, "says his plagoandar.
Tolga, who really has a different name, tells in detail his story for a group of journalists, somewhere in Europe. Nine international media, among them TT, have in a joint review coordinated by the German editorial board Correctiv looked closer at how the Turkish state chases followers of the pastor Fethullah Gülen. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses them of the trial attempt against him on July 15, 2016.
More evidence
After three months of torture, Tolga promises to spy on other gülenists for the security service MIT. He is released and flies the land.
Human rights organizations have more evidence that MIT ensures that some Gülenists "disappear" to secret institutions where they are tortured.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has noted six cases with "credible evidence that these remedies can imply enforced disappearances, which violate international law as well as Turkish law", writes HRW's Turkish Chief Emma Sinclair-Webb to TT. The Turkish organization IHD talks about at least 15 documented cases, the gülenist Stockholm Center for Freedom of at least 20.
Probably there is a dark number - several who have been released dare not tell, some have taken their lives, according to Öztürk Türkdogan, chairman of IHD.
"We conclude that the security service is behind this. Most often, the kidnapped families tell the victims to be taken in the middle of the street and taken away in a black van with tinted boxes, "said Türkdogan.
First witnesses
"Tolga" and another victim, as we call Ali, are the first to tell international media about torture in secret prisons. Both are gülenists, but are unrelated to each other. "Ali" says he was tortured for more than three months in unknown place, even that in Ankara.
"You're a terrorist, you're a traitor," they said.
Sometimes he was taken to the "coffin", a box where you can hardly breathe.
"You do not know if you are in there for a minute or several hours. Then they take out one and torture one.
Even he had to be a denominator, released and fled the country.
Tolgas and Ali's stories are impossible to control, but they are interviewed for hours and are credible.
The Turkish government has not responded to the media's questions but has previously denied torture. President Erdogan promised shortly after the coup attempt "zero tolerance" against torture.
Similar to CIA's flight
The international media have also examined how Turkey is more or less considered to kidnap gülenists and bring them back to their home country. Something similar to the United States previous programs against suspected terrorists. The United States was criticized for secret prisons of torture after the terrorist attacks in 2001, and for the CIA's extrajudicial arrests and detention. An unknown case was the expulsion of two Egyptians from Bromma Airport in 2001.
But while the United States kept its program secret, Turkey is open with its hunting abroad on Gülenan hanger.
"One of us will bring the Gülenists who have moved and now believe they are safe back to our country and hand them over to justice," said President Erdogan in a speech in July 2018 to his party.
There are many examples of how well-known guilders abroad are also taken on open streets and handed over to Turkey, even if they do not end up in secret torture prisons. Several events have been filmed.
Hundreds handed over
Many taken are teachers at the Gülen movement schools around the world.
Crises, or distressed critics, have taken place from Kosovo, Gabon, Sudan, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Malaysia, and many more countries that have been helpful.
"Without following proper legal procedures, security services in several countries, including Kosovo and Moldova, have collaborated with Turkish agents in 2018 to capture and transfer Turkish citizens to Turkey where they have been detained," writes Emma Sinclair-Web at HRW.
It is a "flagrant violation of the rights of the grippers. Several of these extraditions have largely been abandoned, "she continues.
A total of a hundred people have been taken from abroad, according to Turkish ministers.
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