Esra Yurt, a Turkish woman who was detained as part of an investigation into Turkey’s Gulen group, said in an interview that she had her feet burned with acid in police custody at the notorious Ankara Anti-Terror Branch (TEM).
Speaking to Turkish journalist Sevinç Özarslan in an exclusive interview on Friday, Yurt said she was detained by Turkish police in February 2017 over alleged links to Turkey’s Gülen group, which the Turkish gov’t accuses of masterminding a coup attempt in July 15, 2016.
Spending some five days in custody in Ankara, the woman said that a police officer poured acid on her feet to force her to confess “membership in the group.”
“[The officer] asked us to put out either our hands or feet. I put out my feet. She rised my left foot and poured some liquid on it. It was very painful. I later learned that it was some sort of an acid. Some people had it on their hands, some others had it on their feet. They then send us back to our holding cell,” the woman said in the interview.
Yurt was reportedly released on pending trial after the 5-day-long custody. She later fled Turkey to seek asylum in a European country.
Resim öğretmeni Hatice Dönmez’in kaleminden Esra Yurt’un Ankara TEM’de yaşadığı işlence… Unutmayın, unutturmayın.
İşkence insanlık suçudur. https://t.co/4jcR5b6Fu7
— Sevinç Özarslan (@sevincozarslan) May 29, 2020