Pınar Selek: “Türkiye is like one huge prison.”

A story of resistance

Pınar Selek is a sociologist, researcher, feminist and anti-militarist activist from Türkiye. She grew up surrounded by prison, in particular through accounts from her father, who was imprisoned for nearly five years following the 1980 military coup. She became involved in social struggles and led an oral history project on the Kurdish movement. This work led to her arrest in July 1998. When she refused to provide the names of her Kurdish contacts, she was tortured then imprisoned on the basis of false allegations. Although she was released in December 2000 and acquitted four times, she is still waiting for her final and conclusive acquittal.

A testimonial in two parts. Part 1.

Attention, this article mentions acts of torture and may be disturbing to some readers.

My sister and I grew up surrounded by discussions about prison.

Light and torture

I am Pınar Selek, and I am from Türkiye. Since I was a child, I have witnessed the transformation of Turkish prisons. I grew up under military rule following a military coup in 1980, which led to the imprisonment of around one million people: intellectuals, poets, activists, painters and solicitors. My father was a solicitor who had dedicated his life to defending human rights. He spent five years in prison after the coup. We went to see him every week. At the time, prisons were organised into large dormitories. Although the people there were in exceedingly difficult circumstances, they continued to ponder, criticise, and problematise together, giving us hope at the same time. All these interesting people being held in prisons made them very interesting places to be. People said they went to prison to find a little light. Our house and my mother’s pharmacy also became discussion spaces for the friends and families of prisoners. My sister and I grew up surrounded by discussions about prison.

The government wanted to squash the dissenting revolutionary wave that had preceded the coup. Millions of people had participated in strikes to make their political demands heard. The State did not only want to kill the leaders: it wanted to crush the dignity of the individuals.

This dynamic was at work in prison as well. Violence was directed at members of the Kurdish movement, which the State considered dangerous. The prisoners were subjected to incredibly cruel torture. The first acts of resistance in prison began in 1982, in the Kurdish region, where the suppression had been the most severe. Four Kurdish leaders immolated themselves, launching enormous mass movements outside of prison. Then the hunger strikes began. Four people starved to death between 1982 and 1983. I am not necessarily in favour of this form of resistance, but there are times when nothing else can be done. You either submit or you resist however you can. I believe that this resistance succeeded in changing something in the system, in pushing back against power.

They opted to inflict physical pain on me. But I resisted, one minute at a time.

The arrest

After the coup, imprisonments became regular occurrences. For people who reflected, questioned, or took action, it was normal to spend time in prison. All the great artists I know of went there. I committed to fighting for social justice when I was a teenager, after my father was released. I became a feminist, libertarian, environmentalist, anti-militarist activist. I was part of a new cycle of protests that challenged both the State and the opinions of our parents. We thrived on stories from detention. When they were released from prison, we would meet the people who had been active in leftist movements, and we would criticise them. We had many differences, but also a lot of similarities. Türkiye is like one huge prison. When you are facing a repressive government, you have to learn to fight together, despite your differences.

When I began my research into the Kurdish movement, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to avoid prison. I was arrested in July 1998. The police wanted the names of the people I had interviewed for my research. I didn’t give them. That was when the torture began. It was gruelling. I received electric shocks to my brain. My entire back was broken. Physical torture was systematic with the police. They often used sexual violence against women, especially Kurdish women. I was stripped bare, but I was not sexually assaulted. They opted to inflict physical pain on me. But I resisted, one minute at a time, and I did not give up any names.

Then they took me to prison. I was extremely fortunate because prisons were still organised into dormitories at the time. Regular prisoners and political prisoners did not interact with each other at all; the prison service was afraid of putting us together. There were different dormitories in the women’s section, split up according to political organisations. The Kurdish movement had several dormitories; the left had two or three.

When I arrived, they asked me where I wanted to go. Numerous associations had fought to give political prisoners the right to choose with whom they were imprisoned. From then on, people belonging to the same organisation could stay together. This represented a very significant right. I chose to go into a dormitory with the Kurds. A social-democratic coalition government was in power at the time of my incarceration, which contributed to the improvement of prison conditions. In those days, there were reportedly around 40,000 political prisoners in Türkiye. Across all the dormitories in the women’s section, there were between 300 and 400 political prisoners, including myself. We were not in a facility for sentenced prisoners, although there were also sentenced people with us. So new people were always arriving. In my dormitory, there were periods when there were around 120 or 130 of us, and others when there were 85. The number fluctuated all the time. We were imprisoned but, thanks to the new arrivals, we stayed informed about the outside world.

Helping each woman also helped us.

The smell of soap

When the guards dropped me off in my dormitory, I had not eaten for nearly a week. I could not stand. All my hair had fallen out because of the electric shocks. I could not move, I couldn’t even wiggle my fingers. I had not been to the toilet for maybe a week: I had no choice but to wet myself. I found myself surrounded by so many girls, imprisoned women. They undressed me and washed me. It was pleasant. That smell of soap, I’ll never forget it. Afterwards, they put me to bed and gave me a little to eat. For two or three weeks, I was in total care. No one asked me any questions: they either left me alone or caressed me. It’s very important not to ask questions to someone after they were just interrogated by the police. As the other girls had been through the same thing, they knew what not to do. Questions are traumatising.

Kurdish women were systematically raped. The Turkish State wanted to destroy the Kurds, and it knew that rape would destroy these women. They would, for example, strip the women, blindfold them and attach them to a radiator. The women couldn’t see who was touching them. These were girls who, in general, had no sexual experience, who considered themselves virgins. They also endured numerous other forms of torture. I learned a lot by welcoming in the new arrivals, with all their wounds. They were reflections of what we had all endured.

Helping each woman also helped us. To this day, I have post-traumatic stress from my torture. But I think that I was able to get through it and figure out how to manage this condition by learning to share with others. I will never forget that experience of being helped, the soap, the caresses, the massages. I needed to do the same for others. Each person was different. There were some who cried out, who did not sleep, who trembled constantly. Each time, we had to find a new tactic to help these people, to get them to open up, to recover from their trauma. Care was part of our daily lives. I remember we would massage each other all the time, without thinking, because we knew everyone was in pain. It was normal. I strongly believe in the ethics of care in feminism, and I learned a lot about it in prison.

In contrast, access to the prison’s medical care was a disaster. The doctor saw the political prisoners as enemies. When you went there, you would only receive paracetamol or a sleeping pill, nothing else.

There was an old Kurdish woman, one of the women who healed me, who began bleeding one day. The doctor decided that she did not need to be sent to a hospital. I rushed to write a short statement for the outside, so people would know what was happening. The message spread, and she was able to be taken to the hospital. She was told that she had to be operated on immediately. Then I found solicitors who secured her temporary release. She was able to see her children, then she died. Many people died in similar circumstances. There was a young Turkish woman who was pregnant. She was married to a Kurd and had been accused of faking her pregnancy to plant a bomb somewhere. She was beaten and did not have access to medical examinations. One night, she began screaming and was taken to the emergency room. Her baby had died three days earlier. There were many incredibly difficult stories. When my mother came to visit me, since she was a pharmacist, people asked her tons of medical questions. I took charge of health care for our dormitory, treating people with the few plants we had access to.