Introduction The jails in Turkey have long been mentioned in the same breath as inhumane actions and the breach of even the most basic rights, especially against the political prisoners. The violations have reached to unprecedented levels in parallel with the emergence of the current political-Islamist authoritarianism. The oppressive regime under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule instrumentalized the country’s legal system to muzzle the political dissidence, turning the prisons into concentration camps. The number of inmates behind the bars has reached historic highs. Hosting convicts much more than their capacities, the prisons, which were already substantially subpar, have fallen way below the minimum acceptable standards for human dignity. Patients in particular bore the most of the brunt of this precipitated deterioration of the prison conditions and the wrath of the Turkish regime against its opponents. People are suffering from torments of negligence; even some have died as authorities have turned deaf ears to their cries of anguish while diseases and hardships of old age were gnawing at their flesh and bones. Stories of tragedies, heart-rending images of the victims who died in solitary confinement cells alone, miserable outcries of prisoners who sent letters after letters to human rights watch associations or reactions from international bodies were not enough to cause even a slightest move in the needle of the moral compass of the Turkish authorities. Erdoğan and his political allies, as well as their supporters, even demanded an increase in the pressure on the political prisoners. Even some judges who released a number of journalists due to the lack of evidence were expelled from their duties,1 while their replacements hastily ordered the arrest of these journalists even before they were let leave the prisons. Even the photograph showing the frozen body of Mustafa Kabakçıoğlu, who was a deputy policy inspector dismissed in September 2016 for alleged membership to the Gülen movement and who died on a plastic chair in a cold, damp, single-person cell in the basement of Gümüşhane Penitentiary Institution2, did not cause any reaction other than weak public reactions. The photo, which was announced in a Parliamentary general session by HDP Kocaeli Deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, who spent almost his entire life fighting against human rights violations in Turkey, could not find its place even as news in the mainstream media under the intense pressure of the country’s autocratic administration. The Ministry of Justice did not even respond to a lawmaker’s questions. Let alone inspecting the negligence that led to the death of Kabakçıoğlu, the prosecution instead started an investigation into how his pictures were leaked. In other occasions, no one was found responsible for the deaths of journalist Mevlüt Öztaş and director Fatih Terzioğlu, who caught cancer in prisons. They were not treated, were not given a timely postponement of execution and their release was delayed despite the reports that they could not stay in prisons. They both died. Old people in their 80s, incapable of taking care of their needs on their own and in need of someone’s care at any moment, have been ruthlessly left at the mercy of death in prisons, despite no serious … Continue reading Sick and Elderly Political Prisoners IN ERDOGAN’S TURKEY – Special Report