You know the prisons from close up as someone who has served time for crimes of thought. When a sentence was handed down about my case under Article 8 of the Anti-Terrorism Law, I applied in 1995. I am waiting for the outcome of this application. I think that the result of my application will be announced shortly. I know the prisons intimately for having spent 14 years in them.
Turkish prisons house the most prisoners when the country's population is taken into account.
There are more than 10,000 political prisoners in the prisons. Ranking how the prisons stand on a world basis, they are among the last. Because of this and right to the point of hopelessness, it has its source in the fact that the courts are not independent. The courts' lack of independence in Turkey is a topic which is taboo, not to be debated and has become a withered justice system losing its qualities very rapidly. In Turkey the law and the courts are being used for the sheer sake of political aims.