Kandira F-type prison, near Istanbul. As of May 29, nineteen prisoners and four hungerstriking relatives had died, and an estimated sixty prisoners are facing imminent death. A wide range of medical studies indicate that confinement in solitary or small group isolation can be physically and mentally damaging. Impaired vision and hearing, hallucinations, tinnitus, weakening of the immune system, amenorrhea, premature menopause, depression, anxiety, and aggressive behavior are among the effects documented in studies of prisoners, volunteers, and animals. In the Turkish context, concerns about the direct effects of isolation are augmented by a suspicion that the closed environment of an isolation unit may facilitate torture, ill-treatment, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading abuses.
Torture is a long-standing problem in Turkish police stations and gendarmeries.
To prisoners and families with such experiences, the introduction of isolation units in prisons looks very much like an indefinite extension of the system of incommunicado detention which has facilitated abuse in police lock-ups. Indeed, accounts by prisoners and their families suggest that, as in police custody, guards in F-type prisons have taken advantage of the closed environment to beat and abuse their charges. Legal and medical institutions that could document, challenge, and prevent such abuses have had only limited access. Several prisoners transferred to Kandira F-type prison also made a formal complaint that they had been anally raped with a truncheon by gendarmes. No medical examination was conducted until weeks after the alleged rape, by which time evidence of the assault would have disappeared.