Monthly Archives: August 2021

To the editor: In her recent column urging a shift in Cuba policy, Jean Guerrero makes two tragic but typical mistakes.

First, she pits Cuban whites against Cuban persons of color, assuming that the prosperity of whites (it was the rich ones, after all, who fled the communist regime, wasnt it?) numbs them to the plight of their fellow Cubans.

As a white Marielito Cuban who lived in abject poverty for the first 13 years of his life under the Cuban regimes oppression, and having met many like me during my time in that country, I can assure Guerrero that in Cuba, people of all skin colors suffer the same plight.

Secondly, the assumption that economic relief will inspire Cubans to aspire to a more liberal system fails miserably when one considers China, another communist country. Anyone who thinks economic improvements or prosperity will necessarily bring about political change needs to understand the fact that regimes intent on retaining power have proved themselves unwilling to surrender any.

The U.S. economic embargo against Cuba may have failed miserably, but I was there when dollars from Miami and care packages with Lee jeans started rolling in. The communist regime and its oppression kept on ticking.

Eduardo Suastegui, Downey

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To the editor: Cuba does have a communist government and is not a democracy, and that is also true for Vietnam and China, but companies still do business in the latter countries. Intels largest chip plant is in Vietnam.

The U.S. was instrumental in the overthrow of democracies in Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, Iran, Egypt and Peru, and it supported the dictators in those countries as well as in Cuba prior to the hasty departure in 1959 of Fulgencio Batista, with many millions of dollars of the Cuban governments money.

Cuba has a higher literacy rate and lower infant mortality rate than the United States. Heaven forbid that a country without white elites running it be allowed to prosper.

Bruce Stenman, Prunedale, Calif.

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To the editor: Brava and thank you to Guerrero. After weeks of shoddy and partisan reporting in U.S. media on the Cuba protests, here is a simple, clear analysis of the current situation between the two countries.

Crucially, Guerrero well explains the race and class dynamics that are rarely discussed in U.S. reporting on Cuba.

On the subject of embargoes, isnt it odd that no country has ever blockaded the United States for its actions in Vietnam, Central America, the Middle East and many other places?

John Newby, Studio City

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I fled communist Cuba, where all ethnicities are oppressed - Los Angeles Times

With the Biden administration voicing unequivocal support for Israels request for additional funding for its Iron Dome missile-defense system, the responsibility to fulfill the request now lies with Congress, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Dana Stroul told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.

During the hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterrorism, intended to examine U.S. security assistance throughout the Middle East, senators questioned the U.S.s current military aid posture throughout the region,although Israel aid went uncontested.

Stroul told committee members that Israels request for resupply for the Iron Dome is now in Congress hands, as it must approve the additional appropriations.

We have unequivocally stated our support for supplemental appropriations and support of replenishing and expanding the system. We have consulted extensively with Congress and provided information paperwork to you all to support how you choose to proceed in funding the request, Stroul said.

Israel reportedly requested an additional $1 billion for the missile-defense system which was used extensively, and effectively, during the recent conflict with Gaza on top of the $500 million provided annually as part of the U.S.s memorandum of understanding with Israel. There has been no public movement on the request since Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz two months ago.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who announced the $1 billion request in June, told JI on July 29 that he had not heard any updates on the status of the request, but hoped it would advance sooner rather than later.

During the remainder of the hearing, senators peppered the witnesses with questions about a range of regional challenges, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

Subcommittee Chair Chris Murphy (D-CT) questioned whether, instead of providing increasing aid to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the U.S. should instead be seeking to deescalate the Middle East arms race, referring to discussions hes had with Iranian officials.

I think theres some truth to one of the things they consistently say, which is that our missiles are primarily pointed at the Saudis. And every time you sell them more every time you give them and the Emiratis more equipment and more lethality and more capability, we invest more in our own, Murphy said.

Mira Resnick, deputy assistant secretary of state for regional affairs, responded that security assistance is a critical element of U.S. partnerships in the Middle East, but cannot solve regional conflicts alone.

Security cooperation plays a really important role in our Middle East partnerships, but it is not the only answer, Resnick said. I would stress that our arms transfers, our security cooperation are not going to be the answer, the magic bullet to Saudi insecurity, theyre not going to be the answer to instability in the region. That will come through diplomacy and through a political solution to the regions unfortunately many military conflicts We rely on our partners to understand when there is no military solution to a conflict, and we will continue to stress that to them.

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) argued that U.S. deterrence against Iran has failed, citing the countrys spate of aggressive regional activities, and suggested that reestablishing deterrence might involve increasing aid. Foreign arms sales can be one tool that assists in that overall endeavor, he said.

Stroul responded that the U.S. has conventional overmatch against Iran and seeks to insure that partners have the capabilities and resources to defend themselves while we invested in diplomacy and political processes to wind down conflicts. She added that there is no military solution to the conflicts of the region nor to Iranian aggression.

She went on to blame the Trump administrations maximum pressure campaign for the increased rate of Iranian-backed attacks against U.S. forces and allies in the Middle East.

Murphy also probed U.S. aid to Egypt, which has seen ongoing government oppression and human rights violations, some of which the Egyptian military has participated in.

Isnt there a risk at some point that if theres no consequence for a country like Egypt to continuing this crackdown on political dissent and speech, that it compromises our ability to lead the world when it comes to the advancement of democracy and human rights? Murphy asked.

He also questioned whether U.S. aid is still necessary in order to prompt Egypt to achieve a detente with Israel or if that relationship, and the U.S.-Egypt relationship, would persist unchanged if the U.S. withdrew a portion of its aid.

Stroul responded that the U.S. has raised human rights concerns with Egypt but values the relationship with Egypt as an important security partner, and we believe and support that Egypt has legitimate security concerns and believe that security assistance to Egypt is a critical tool to supporting those needs.

She further emphasized that Egypt is a critical partner in the region due to its control of the Suez Canal, its key role in mediating relations between Israel and Gaza and its position in countering violence in Libya, among other issues.

Young, Murphy and the committees witnesses also discussed the U.S.s broader goal of focusing attention toward great-power competition with China.

The new U.S.-China great-power competition requires a reevaluation of our global commitments and presence, especially in the Middle East, Young said. The historic Abraham Accords provide an opportunity for such reflection. As the United States reduces its own presence, our role in the region must change from the leader to an active supporter. And for this strategy to be successful we will have to rely upon the governments of the partners and allies we have, not the ones we necessarily wish we had.

Murphy questioned the common refrain in foreign policy circles that, if the U.S. does not continue to provide military assistance at current levels in the Middle East, China and Russia will intervene in its place.

Resnick said that China is not in a position to replace the U.S. as the partner of choice in the region.

While it is looking to undercut our security relationships throughout the world, according to Resnick, China has shown no interest in nor a capability to replace the U.S. as the key guarantor of regional stability in the Middle East.

Security cooperation will undoubtedly play a role there in our response to strategic competition in the Middle East but also beyond the Middle East, globally, she said. It requires us to work with allies and partners, not denigrate them because our combined weight is much harder for China to ignore.

China and Russias security relationships with Iran are further cause for concern for U.S. allies in the region, Stroul added.

It is yet another reason why our partners need to be reminded that the U.S. is the security partner of choice who will responsibly work with them to respond to their legitimate defensive needs, she said. Turning toward China or Russia will not support their security or stability, especially when both of those governments are looking to embolden and enhance Tehrans conventional military capabilities.

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On the hill Additional Iron Dome aid now up to Congress, Biden admin says - Jewish Insider

Staying true to its abiding commitment to the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir as enshrined in the UN resolutions, Pakistan observed 5th August as Exploitation Day (Youm-e-Istehsal) in commemoration of the ending of the special status of Indian-Occupied Kashmir by the Modi government two years ago. The Observance of the day was meant to show solidarity with the oppressed people of Indian-Occupied Kashmir and also to sensitize the world community about the horrendous situation they were confronted with. On the appeal of the All-Parties Hurriyet Conference a complete shutter-down strike was also observed in major cities of Indian-Occupied Kashmir besides protest rallies by the Pakistani and Kashmiri diasporas across the world.

Notwithstanding the fact that the international community has refused to buy the Indian narrative that the action taken in Indian-Occupied Kashmir was her internal matter and reiteration by the UNSC in its informal meetings that the solution to the Kashmir dispute had to be found in accordance with the UN Charter and the relevant UN resolutions, India remains adamant in not heeding the international voices. It has also neglected protests by the UN and the communications written to it by EU parliamentarians in regards to human rights violations in Indian-Occupied Kashmir Indian-Occupied Kashmir.

Kashmiris are facing unabated extra-judicial killings, custodial torture and deaths, arbitrary detentions, burning and looting of houses to inflict collective punishment and other worst forms of human rights abuses. These abuses have been well documented by a number of international organizations including the UN, the OHCHR, European Parliament, international media and global human rights entities such as Amnesty International.

According to reports compiled by international agencies, over 500 people have been killed since 5 August 2019. Three thousand people are under arrest, including 200 politicians. Reportedly 10,000 people have been picked up and have disappeared since. Though internet services were restored in August 2020 on the orders of the Indian Supreme Court, the people are still living in an open prison and suffering immensely at the hands of the Indian security forces.

The Modi government has not only ended the special status of the state and annexed it to the Indian Union but has also initiated a process for changing political, constitutional and cultural ground realities besides the economic disempowerment of the people of Indian-Occupied Kashmir in pursuance of the implementation of BJP agenda. The process has been unleashed through the promulgation of a new domicile law to change demographic realities and turn Indian-Occupied Kashmir into a Hindu-majority state. All the foregoing actions by India constitute a serious violation of the UNSC resolutions, international law and the fourth Geneva Convention.

The Indian government however is desperately trying to create and build a narrative of normalcy in Indian-Occupied Kashmir to hoodwink the world. Modi recently convened an All Parties Conference, attended by Congress and pro-Indian political entities ostensibly to reverse the developing situation. However it failed to achieve the desired objective. Even the pro-India parties insisted on restoration of the old status of the state with the same administrative and constitutional powers.

The APHC, which is the real representative of the people of Kashmir, was not invited to the moot. The real objective of the Modi government to convene the APC was to seek approval for its scheme for delimitation of the assembly constituencies which would have ensured enhancement in the number of non-Muslim seats in the assembly, making it convenient for the BJP to install its own Chief Minister.

There is no denying the Indian action of 5 August 2019 not only constitutes an affront to the UN and the conscience of the world community, but has also endangered the regions peace and security. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has continuously been rattling the conscience of the global community and warning it against the dangers that the RSS philosophy of Hindutva poses to this region.

The Modi governments action of 5 August 2019 has also been opposed by conscientious elements within India as well as Congress, the major opposition political party. P. Chidambaram, a senior leader of Congress, opposing the bill for the repeal of Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, had said The move will have catastrophic consequences. You are dismembering the J&K in the name of people of Kashmir. Do not do that. Reflect on what you are doing. Momentarily you may think you have scored a victory, but you are wrong and history will prove you to be wrong. Future generations will realize what a grave mistake this House is making today. BJPs sense of victory will be short-lived and history will prove it to be wrong His statement reflected historic truth.

Oppression and injustice never last long. History is replete with examples where oppression, persecution and injustice have led to the downfall and destruction of nations and civilizations, bestowing ignominy and ruin on those who as oppressor inflicted wounds on the oppressed. It is said that oppression has its own self-destructive dimension. The oppressors met that fate because they strived to suppress the truth through the power at their command rather than employing human virtues and values to ensure longevity to their power-stints.

Malcolm X, an African-American leader of the civil rights movement in the USA, said, Time is on the side of the oppressed today, its against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, its against the oppressor. You dont need anything else. The quote contains an eternal truth that the oppressor is destined to perish ultimately because of him being against the truth, and when that is the situation the oppressed do not need anything to get rid of him.

Robert F. Kennedy, expressing thoughts on oppression, its fate and the reaction it generates among the oppressed, said, Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

It is about time that the UN and global community woke up to the oppression against people of Indian-Occupied Kashmir and stopped the hate philosophy of Hindutva in its tracks before it was too late and also played a role in the implementation of the relevant UN resolutions. The Indian leaders must also learn from history. By oppressing and persecuting the people of Kashmir and denying them the right of self-determination they are trying to reverse the wheel of history, which is impossible and can have disastrous consequences.

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Exploitation day shows the way - Pakistan Today

At least two hospital systems in Iowa and numerous businesses are now mandating the COVID vaccine shot, with notable religious, health and pregnancy exemptions. I have been contacted by numerous citizens, from both inside and outside the district, concerned about the safety of the vaccine and the implications of a free people being coerced or mandated to take this shot against their will. The concern is real, and we must have a serious debate on how to address the competing priorities of public health and the constitutional right of a free people to lead their lives and decide what is ingested into their bodies.

During the 2021 legislative session, I floor-managed into law legislation intended to restrict local and state governments ability to mandate the COVID vaccine. We did not address the issue of businesses being able to mandate the vaccine, precisely because this is a completely different discussion. Ultimately, the free market could fix this, but short term that does not appear to be the case.

Ronald Reagan reminded us that the Constitution exists to restrict government, not people. If we pass restrictions on what private business owners can do, such as preventing the mandating of the COVID shot, we have now restricted not government, but those private citizens who own the businesses. I generally oppose government mandates on businesses; however, it must be acknowledged that plenty of mandates on businesses do exist, mostly related to civil rights issues. I have carefully considered these questions and concluded that the mandating of an experimental shot is most certainly a civil rights issue, and it is appropriate to restrict both government and business from having this power over peoples lives.

The precedents that have been set during the COVID pandemic, both by government and business, are deeply disturbing. Government has shut down churches, restricted commerce, destroyed businesses, tread on our most fundamental rights, and assaulted the work ethic by continuing to pay people not to work, even as businesses struggle to find workers as they attempt to fully reopen. Big tech and mainstream media have silenced dissent in the COVID debate, willingly choosing to become censors for those in control that they agree with. This profoundly dangerous tactic smacks of communist and dictatorial control that is very much at home in China, Cuba, Russia, and the former Soviet Union.

Refusing to accept individual choice and at times in defiance of science and common sense, the federal government under the Biden Administration is advancing numerous strategies to coerce citizens into taking the COVID shot. Their intention is to make life miserable for those who do not conform, including loss of livelihood, health care, and free movement within our society. Those who do not comply with the we must control you crowd may soon face denial of government services, lack of health care options, lost wages, mandated masks, and segregation from others in society.

Taking their cues from the CDC and Biden Administration, many big businesses and hospital systems have decided that individual liberty and body autonomy are meaningless, and they plow full speed ahead mandating the COVID shot, with the threat of termination for those who do not comply. Apply these facts to any other situation, and regardless of your feelings on COVID, ask yourself if you are comfortable with this loss of personal liberty and body autonomy to the powers that be. I am not.

Thankfully in Iowa, we have a Governor who deeply values our Constitution, and has done her best to balance the health data she has been provided, with the societal, economic, and constitutional concerns that also must be part of the equation. We also have a Republican-controlled Legislature that values individual liberty and led the charge for freedom in the session that just ended.

After consultation with the Governors office, I spearheaded legislation that stripped the authority of schools and local governments to mandate masks, since it was apparent that some simply refused to give up the power they were drunk on. It should have never been their decision in the first place; the decision to wear or not wear a mask should be up to individuals and parents.

When serious discussion began on vaccine passports and government mandating the vaccine, once again the Governor and Legislature acted, prohibiting the issuance of any government identification that shows a citizens COVID vaccine status. We also prohibited government in Iowa from mandating the vaccine. Now, considering the assault on individual liberty by the federal government, various health care systems, and some businesses, I believe we must act to protect individual liberty by preventing the experimental COVID shot from being mandated as a condition of survival in our state and nation.

We must ask ourselves where this is going to end. How much control and liberty are we willing to surrender in exchange for what may well be a false sense of security. It is clear that many in power refuse to let go of the control they believe they can wield over our society in the name of safety from COVID, with many motives in play that have nothing to do with public safety. The long-term implications of this should scare a free people to death.

So often as we face difficult decisions, the words of our Founding Fathers rush through time and speak to us, just as pertinent and wise as they were when they were first spoken. In this case, some might believe that freedom to choose whether or not to take the vaccine is more dangerous than the loss of freedom that comes with mandating the vaccine. I do not agree and suggest we carefully consider the words of Thomas Jefferson I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

I have always tried to tell my fellow citizens where I stand on the issues. So, here it is:

There is no silver bullet solution here. If you value your individual liberty, let your voice be heard, loud and clear, to those who represent you, and to your fellow citizens. We have much at stake in this debate and our actions could decide what the future of our children and our Republic look like.

I hope we will stand for dangerous freedom over the far more dangerous oppression in the name of a false sense of security that has resulted in the loss of freedom and tyranny since time began.

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Holt: Dangerous Freedom or Peaceful Slavery In Response to COVID-19? - The Iowa Torch

For years, he has been one of Turkeys most outspoken human rights advocates, taking to the floor of parliament and social media with tales of abuse, torture, and midnight arrests at the hands of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But just after midnight on April 2, Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a member of parliament for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), found that it was his turn. The police were waiting at his door, arrest warrant in hand.

It started politely, but soon we found ourselves screaming as the police dragged our father away, Faruks son, Salih Gergerlioglu, told me in April. Suddenly he was gone, and we realized they hadnt even let him put on his shoes. Stripped of his parliamentary immunity in March, the 55-year-old lawmaker had been charged with spreading terrorist propaganda over a series of tweets from 2016 that criticized the governments abandonment of peace talks with Kurdish insurgents.

His real crime was broadcasting reports of rights abuses in parliament, his son said. He was one of the last who dared share the stories of victims of abuse in prisons, in police custody, and anywhere else.

When he was taken in, Gergerlioglu joined a population of political prisoners in Turkey that has ballooned since the fateful night of July 15, 2016, when a failed military uprising against Erdogan killed hundreds, deeply traumatized Turkish society, and triggered a crackdown on opposition voices that continues at warp speed a half-decade later.

A massive expansion of the countrys prison network is abetting that crackdown and its accompanying human rights abuses.

Satellite imagery reveals construction on 131 prisons beginning between July 2016 and March 2021, with Turkish Ministry of Justice documents and press reports indicating nearly 100 additional facilities under consideration by Erdogans government.

The current rate of construction is more than double that in the four years before the failed coupa time when mass arrests and political imprisonment in Turkey were already generating international alarm. Over that period, 64 prisons were observed under construction via satellite imagery.

Photos of prison sites feature multiple individual prisons, with maximum security buildings identified by outer walls and rows of identical interior courtyards. Surrounding buildings are used for administration, staff lodging, and as minimum security prisons.

Toggle between images to show development between 2016-2017 and 2020-2021.

Prisons have grown in size as well as number. The floorspace of prisons built after 2016 increased by an average of 50 percent when compared to the previous period, with photos published by the government and local media showing three-story prison blocks replacing two-story designs popular before the coup, and a measurement of new and old facilities via satellite imagery showing prison layouts also sprawling over larger areas of land.

Turkeys government has made no secret of its prison-building spree. Yet a closer look reveals the unprecedented scale of its efforts, which include sprawling facilities rising in remote corners of the country, a plan to build one of the largest prison complexes in the world, and a massive overall increase in the governments capacity to punish dissent.

New prisons would allow Turkeys government to further increase an inmate population that surged to nearly 300,000 in 2019 from 180,000 after the failed putsch. For the first time last year, Turkeys incarceration rate ranked highest among all 47 member states of the Council of Europe.

A representative from Turkeys justice ministry did not reply to multiple interview requests for this article. But Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul has publicly described Turkeys new prisons as urgently needed to solve the problem of chronic overcrowding and help close scores of out-of-date facilities.

Yet the mentality of this government is to immediately fill whatever prison it builds, Gergerlioglu said in an interview before his own imprisonment. And new prisons will do nothing to stop human right abuses occurring in jails while the justice ministry willingly turns a blind eye to them.

In the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey announced a state of emergency, granting Erdogan sweeping powers to dismiss hundreds of thousands of public servants, ban public assemblies, and arrest opponents.

Less visibly, the emergency law helped demolish budgetary and zoning restrictions for prison construction, allowing Ankara to rapidly issue prison contracts to firms close to the government, as the veteran Turkish investigative journalist Cigdem Toker reported in a series of articles in 2017.

The government says older prisons are simply being replaced. But tiny, antiquated facilities are being traded for mass prison complexes, Toker said. It comes across like a plan to imprison more people than ever previously considered.

Featuring towering concrete walls, guard towers, and rows of narrow courtyards running along their interior, 75 of the post-coup facilities viewed by Foreign Policy were built as maximum-security facilities. The remaining 56 were built as minimum-security prisons.

The Sincan prison megacomplex, located outside the Turkish capital of Ankara, is where Gergerlioglu was imprisoned in April. Since 2016, the facility has surged in size. Its official capacity grew by roughly 60 percent, from 6,500 to around 10,900 inmates. The addition of four large, high-security compounds to the site puts Sincans overall size at 420 acres, half the area of New Yorks Central Park.

Across Turkeys rural interior, new complexes have risen up like small, self-contained cities, located far outside the nearest towns. On the outskirts of the central Anatolian city of Aksaray, population 423,000, a colossal, 519 million lira prison (equivalent to $145 million in 2017 terms, when the contract was issued ) with space for 6,000 inmates will soon replace a city jail of crumbling limestone walls. The new complex is the largest single investment in the history of Aksaray, a local official stated in 2017.

A colossal prison on the outskirts of Aksaray cost $145 million and will house 6,000 inmates.

More prisons are on the way. Officials are planning a 15,000-inmate facility in the northwestern province of Bursa. The complex would be among the largest in the world, equal in capacity to Rikers Island, the largest contiguous prison complex in the United States, and outsized only by the biggest of internment complexes built for Muslim minorities in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

So far, the post-coup building spree is set to increase the total capacity of Turkeys prisons by more than 70 percent, to at least 320,000 from around 180,000 in 2016.

Construction has marked a huge outlay for a struggling economy and cash-strapped government.

Government sources place the cost at between 11.2 billion and 13 billion Turkish lira ($1.3 billion to $1.5 billion).

Erdogan himself, normally keen to champion controversial government megaprojects as key to Turkeys development, has refrained from speaking directly about new prisons.ThisJuly,hepledged toconverta prison in Diyarbakir, the countrys largest Kurdish-majority city, into a cultural center,acknowledgingthe10-acre facilitys long historyof oppression, torture, and inhuman treatmentamid the Turkish states 37-year war with Kurdish insurgents. He did not mentionthecolossal,230-acrereplacement complexhis governmenthas built on the citys outskirtsover the last decade, a prison with far improved facilities but with its own growing list of abuse allegations.

The bad optics may be clear to a man who was himself jailed for reading an Islamist poem in public in 1997 and who, despite his vast powers, still often casts himself as an outsider and victim of injustice.

Erdogan and Gergerlioglu once walked the same path. They came from pious, working-class families and grew up disillusioned with the countrys secularist order.

Gergerlioglu became a doctor, but by the early 1990s he found himself preoccupied with activism against Turkeys ban on headscarves in state institutions. He gained a national reputation for pious human rights work and backed Erdogans ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) during its first hopeful decade in power.

Yet the AKPs authoritarian turn made Gergerlioglu an unsparing critic. In 2018, he became a deputy for the Kurdish-rights-focused HDP, even as Erdogan jailed its leaders. Gergerlioglus stubborn commitment to human rights has made him a last hope for people like Zuleyha Koc, a middle-aged mother of two, who recently watched on her cellphone as the lawmaker spoke out against her husbands own two-year imprisonment.

Some days, it feels like we fell off the face of the Earth, said Koc, who watched Gergerlioglus speech via an opposition-run YouTube channel. This makes me feel like maybe we havent. Her husband, Lutfi Koc, formerly worked as a dorm supervisor at a private school in a city on the Aegean coast. In 2019, the 46-year-old was sentenced to more than eight years in prison on charges of membership in a terrorist organization.

A confidential witness accused him of delivering lectures to students on behalf of Fethullah Gulen, a self-exiled preacher whose elusive faith network stands accused by Turkeys government of masterminding the coup attempt.

The Gulen movement had once paved Erdogans road to power, leveraging a network of followers in the judiciary and police to dismantle the old secularist order, jail journalists, and intimidate critics. But a power struggle erupted between Erdogan and Gulen in 2013. Erdogan prevailed, and since 2016, the wrath of the state has fallen on hundreds of thousands of suspected members of what his government now brands a terrorist organization, known by the acronym FETO.

Leaving little room for ambiguity, state-controlled media widely refer to the prisons rising across Turkey as FETO prisons, while the acronym has become an indiscriminate moniker for any critic of Erdogan. Indeed, the term defines the lives of countless people like Lutfi Koc, who are either low-level Gulenists or ordinary citizens ensnared by a vengeful justice system.

The last time I spoke to Lutfi, he said he had been beaten by guards during his transfer from one prison to the next, Zuleyha Koc said. He said a doctor was called when his eye started bleeding. But once the bleeding stopped, he says they started beating him again.

International and local rights groups have catalogued tales of torture and abuse in prisons with skyrocketing frequency since the failed coup. They describe beatings by guards, violent threats, sexual assault, rape, and humiliating and repeated strip searches of female inmates.

In 2019 we received quite a few reports of torture and abuse, Berivan Korkut of the Civil Society in the Penal System Association, a Turkish prison reform group, told me in May. And in 2020 that number increased even further.

Korkut listed a range of chronic abuses, including overcrowding, the withholding of medical treatment, and severe restrictions on inmates communications with lawyers and family members.

She added that new facilities may ease overcrowding but arent likely to impact other abusive practices. In fact, in at least three cases reported since 2017, the opening of new prisons has almost immediately been accompanied by outcries of torture among inmates families.

Turkeys justice ministry has declared investigations into those incidents. But that does not satisfy Gergerlioglu, who said that the hundreds of reports of abuses he has forwarded to the parliaments human rights commission overwhelmingly go unanswered.

He chronicles a growing list of tragedies that define Turkeys prison system: a schoolteacher who died in prison after she lost access to medications needed to treat a chronic illness, a lawyer for political prisoners who died on hunger strike while protesting her own imprisonment, the more than 800 children younger than age 6 who live in prison with their mothersa number that has grown sharply since the failed coup.

For Lutfi Koc, the biggest challenge of imprisonment has been a lack of access to medical care. In 2019, doctors found two cysts in his brain. It took more than a year for Koc to access the care he needed to confirm the cysts were not cancer.

They abandoned my husband to his death, his wife said. She added that he remains in ill health, losing weight and experiencing occasional hallucinations that have prompted him to request additional hospital visits.

Medical careand nearly every aspect of prison lifehas been immensely complicated by COVID-19. Turkeys government says that 50 inmates have died in its prisons since the onset of the virus, and it maintains that it is taking strict precautions against the virus in these facilities.

Zuleyha Koc disputes that claim and says her husband fell ill from COVID-19 in late 2020. In her telling, he endured chronically overcrowded prison cells with other clearly sick inmates, an experience punctuated only by long periods of solitary confinement.

Toggle between images to show development between 2016-2017 and 2020-2021.

The crisis in Turkeys prison system is no less alarming when told through official statistics. These numbers suggest a system near breakdown and severely unprepared to manage the excesses of its own government.

To accommodate the incredible surge in new prisoners since the coup attempt, Turkeys Justice Ministry has released around 190,000 nonpolitical prisonersa number greater than the entire pre-coup prison populationin two separate amnesties since 2016. Yet the prison population still surged to stratospheric highs. The prison population hit nearly 300,000 in the first half of 2020, outstripping a national prison capacity of only 233,000, despite a first amnesty. Today, the official number sits at nearly 288,000 despite a second amnesty meant to reduce prison overcrowding amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And though an unknown number of those inmates have been granted temporary house arrest as part of the amnesty, the measure expires in November, while the overall inmate population far exceeds Turkeys current prison capacity of around 250,000.

Prisoners of conscience have been barred from release even under the COVID-19 amnesty, with pro-democracy philanthropist Osman Kavala and HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas remaining imprisoned despite international outcry. Violent offenders, meanwhile, have been let go, with opposition media chronicling a rash of femicides and domestic violence by inmates released in 2020.

Also freed in 2020 was far-right mafia leader Alaattin Cakici, known for organizing the assassinations of dozens of leftists in the 1970s, contracting the murder of his ex-wife at a ski resort, and issuing open death threats to opposition journalists from his prison cell in 2018.

Zuleyha Koc, meanwhile, cannot secure house arrest for her husband, despite his health and the special needs of their severely disabled 6-year-old son. It takes all my strength not to break down in front of my children, she said. Every minister and official remains silent, every court denies my appeals.

Many in Turkey would have little sympathy for so-called enemies of the state like Lutfi Koc. But they should, argues Korkut, the prison reform advocate. The government has sharply increased incarceration rates for nonpolitical crimes as well as political ones, she said. Mass incarceration has become the norm in Turkey over the last 15 years, with almost zero public debate.

On July 1, Turkeys Constitutional Court unexpectedly ruled that Gergerlioglu be freed and his prison sentence annulled.

But few could place their trust in Turkeys highest judicial authority, given that Erdogans government has brushed aside its release rulings in the pastas well as those from the European Court of Human Rights.

Opposition parties scrambled to launch a joint campaign for Gergerlioglus freedom when he remained in prison days after the decision, while Gergerlioglus son was violently detained by police during a protest at the gates of Sincan prison.

Amid the growing outcry, Gergerlioglu was finally released late on the night of July 6. Justice has not returned to Turkey, he told me. But my freedom shows that even now, activism can occasionally make a difference, even in the highly controlled justice system.

Still, around 4,000 of Gergerlioglus fellow HDP members remain behind bars, including nine members of parliament.

And though Erdogan promised judicial reforms and improved prison conditions earlier this year, rights groups say recent measures only increase the potential for retribution against inmates who report abuse.

Meanwhile, the prisons keep coming. In the first three months of 2021, Turkeys justice ministry finalized contracts for six new facilities. That news unnerves Toker, the investigative journalist. This construction is simply inseparable from the claims of torture and inhumane conditions that grow by the day, she said.

Gergerlioglu told me he was not subject to abuse in prison but said he was repeatedly struck by police officers during his transfer to Sincan prison in April. His status as a lawmaker was restored by parliament on July 16.

But its hard to be optimistic about the future.

A motion filed in March to permanently close the HDPTurkeys second-largest opposition partyis underway, and it would ban over 450 of the partys members from politics. A mass trial of over 100 of the HDPs leaders began in April. Its former co-chairman, Demirtas, remains imprisoned despite calls for his release from Turkeys Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights in 2020.

The facility where he is held has doubled in size around him since he was first confined there in 2016.

We have not seen the end of political jailings, Gergerlioglu said. But we have no choice but to continue the struggle for justice.

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The Prison System Turkey's Government Is Building to Jail Opponents - Foreign Policy