SILIVRI — It’s a dark stain amidst green fields: a mass of concrete, ringed with barbed wire, set in vast farmland near the Sea of Marmara. Though spring has begun elsewhere, the Silivri prison remains locked in winter.
On March 23, Ekrem İmamoğlu, the immensely popular mayor of Istanbul and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main adversary, joined the ranks of around 22,000 detainees in this notorious prison complex, a nearly two hours’ drive from the Turkish metropolis.
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Arrested early on March 19 and held in custody, he was transferred there to await trial on charges of “corruption.”
“This is a coup. His detention is purely political. It coincides with the official announcement of his candidacy for the 2028 presidential election. The regime fears his growing popularity and will do anything to block his path,” says Lal Denizli, the newly elected mayor of Cesme, standing outside the imposing gates of this high-security facility.
On April 9, this young party mayor from the opposition CHP party — the big winner of the 2024 municipal elections — managed to visit İmamoğlu after passing through the extensive security checks of Silivri, now renamed Marmara Prison.
A single cell
“He’s in a single cell and remains in good spirits. Nevertheless, his place should not be in prison, but with the people who elected him democratically. What a waste!” she says. A waste symbolic of the absurdity in today’s ailing Turkish democracy, where every word and gesture can be used against anyone who overshadows the “reis” (leader).
“”In the times we live in, we are witnessing a two-tiered justice system, where real criminals are ignored, and those deemed undesirable have no chance to prove their innocence,” protests urban planner Tayfun Kahraman, jailed for three years, in a message posted on X — a thinly veiled reference to the corruption scandals surrounding Erdogan’s circle. He lists, among others, the arbitrary imprisonment of students and journalists during protests against Imamoglu’s arrest. Last February, he adds, an astrologer who predicted Erdogan’s death even ended up in solitary confinement.
A detention as tragicomic as his own: At 44, Kahraman is imprisoned in Section 9 of Silivri, reserved for political prisoners, for defending Istanbul’s Gezi Park in 2013 against a controversial shopping mall project. “Attempted overthrow of the government!” the prosecutor ruled nine years later, in 2022, convicting him and seven others to 18 years in prison, in the presence of his daughter, Vera, then 2 and a half years old.
“What crime did he commit? His case file doesn’t contain a single piece of evidence,” protests his wife, Meriç, who is highly active on social media.
The 600-page indictment included outlandish “evidence,” like a map of bee colonies that he allegedly used as a blueprint to redraw Turkey’s borders.
Among these absurd imprisonments, philanthropist Osman Kavala holds the tragic record. Accused of masterminding the Gezi protests, he is serving a life sentence in solitary confinement. The 600-page indictment included outlandish “evidence,” like a map of bee colonies that he allegedly used as a blueprint to redraw Turkey’s borders.
Placed in pre-trial detention in 2016, the man whom the pro-government press refer to as “Red Soros” — in reference to the American philanthropist financier — had nevertheless believed in a possible breakthrough in 2020, when at the end of yet another hearing under heavy protection in Silivri itself, the patron of the arts was finally exonerated. A few hours later, as his family and friends waited for him in the freezing cold to celebrate his release, a new arrest warrant was issued, this time in connection with the attempted coup of 2016.
Watchtowers and high walls
Erol Önderoglu, a Reporters Without Borders’ representative in Turkey, knows this story all too well. Defending jailed journalists for 30 years, he has witnessed countless Kafkaesque trials and arbitrary convictions. “Silivri is the painful success story of today’s oppressors. It is an illustration of a repressive system portraying everyone as corrupt, malicious or terrorists except themselves,” he says.
In June 2016, Önderoglu himself was thrown into Silivri. His “crime”? Supporting Özgür Gündem, a newspaper accused of links to the Kurdish PKK movement. Charged with “terrorist propaganda,” he was placed in solitary confinement in a filthy 10-square-meter cell.
As the days go by, a sort of mechanical rhythm sets in: “We get caught up in the system.
“I was mentally prepared from listening to so many former prisoners,” he says. But solitude is real mental torture: “The night of the bloody Istanbul airport bombing on June 28 was by far the most difficult; what if my wife and son were among the victims? I was racked with anxiety. I had to wait for their visit, the next day, to finally feel relieved.”
As the days go by, a sort of mechanical rhythm sets in: “We get caught up in the system. First, there’s roll call, around 7 a.m., then breakfast. After that, the day oscillates between outings in the communal playground and visits from the lawyers.” Sometimes, unexpected surprises break the routine: “Back then, the courtyard was still open-air, with no fence, and little packages would sometimes rain down on us: the day’s newspaper, messages of encouragement… One day, we even came close to having a mist sprayer dropped on our heads. This outside support is heartwarming.”
Over time, bonds are forged among the isolated prisoners. “After 10 days in detention,“ Önderoglu says, ”I heard calls through the pipes. I recognized the voice of lawyer Ramazan Demir, incarcerated in the next cell: ‘Erol, you’re free! CNN Turk just announced it!’ That’s how I learned of my release.”
Free but not out of the woods: Önderoglu, facing a 14-year prison sentence, was summoned to court again and again for three years. Finally acquitted in July 2019, he has found himself back in the crosshairs of justice since October 2020. “The acquittal was overturned after President Erdogan publicly attacked my co-defendant, medical examiner Sebnem Korur Fincanci, who had just been appointed president of the Turkish Medical Association, calling her a ‘terrorist,’” the reporter explains. Proof, he says, of “a justice system obeying those in power.”
Frantic race for power
With its watchtowers and high protective walls, Silivri is a stark illustration of the authoritarian shift in Turkey in recent years. Built in 2008 on the outskirts of the town of the same name, once known for its sandy beaches, the prison complex is an artificial bramble on the outskirts of a seaside resort. In all, nine closed and one open prison, two courtrooms, a public hospital, a soccer pitch, an elementary school, a shopping center and a cafeteria make it one of the largest prison complexes in Europe.
“At first,” recalls a political analyst, “Silivri held not only ordinary prisoners but also high-ranking military personnel, who were on trial in the Ergenekon and Balyoz trials” These were the early years of the AKP, the Justice and Development Party of the Islamo-conservative Erdogan. Then prime minister, the former mayor of Istanbul — who had also been jailed in the late 1990s for reading a poem with Islamist overtones — embarked on a campaign against the army, judged to be too influential within the state apparatus.
What was then presented as the democratization of Turkey soon turned out to be motivated by a frantic race for power.
It’s a far cry from Midnight Express-style torture: This is the era of reforms and the abolition of capital punishment, as part of the process of accession to the European Union. But what was then presented as the democratization of Turkey soon turned out to be motivated by a frantic race for power.
After the muscular Gezi episode, the coup attempt of July 15, 2016 offered Erdogan the perfect opportunity to hunt down all his opponents: members of the pro-Gülen movement, his former political ally accused of being behind the putsch, Kurdish PKK militants, judges, businessmen, teachers, writers…
Journalist and novelist Ahmet Altan has had this bitter experience. Picked up at his home by police in the early hours of Sept. 23, 2016, he was accused of sending a “subliminal message” calling for insurrection during a television interview broadcast the day before the coup. Imprisoned in Silivri, then sentenced to life imprisonment two years later, he was released in November 2019, only to be arrested again a week later.
“Reading the lies about me has given me a better understanding of what a massacre of the law the thousands of people imprisoned since July 15 have been subjected to,” he will say in a plea. Released in April 2021, the author of I Will Never See the World Again is now under house arrest in his Istanbul apartment, barred from leaving Turkey.
“In recent years, we’ve seen a new form of imprisonment: You’re free without being free, because you’re forced to wear an electronic bracelet, report to the police station once a week, or, like cartoonist Musa Kart, deprived of a passport,” Önderoglu says.
New crackdown
After a slight lull in the corridors of Silivri, the imprisonment of Ekrem İmamoğlu signals a new turn of the screw.
“Today, the whole of democracy is under lock and key: political opponents, artists, journalists,” warns CHP MP Gökan Zeybek. In this grassy area where lawyers and prisoners’ families meet, just a few meters from the prison entrance, he answers questions from the media and gives news of the other mayors in prison, including those of the Besiktas and Sisli districts. Across the road, the logo of the ultranationalist Zafer party floats above a tent erected in support of its leader, Ümit Özdag, also imprisoned.
“These young people have done nothing but peacefully defend the respect of their vote. Their place is at university, not in prison!”
A car raises a cloud of dust as it emerges from Silivri. Enes Çiçek, representative of the support network for the families of the 300 or so students arrested at the start of the protests, says: “These young people have done nothing but peacefully defend the respect of their vote. Their place is at university, not in prison!”
In mid-April, after some 20 days in pre-trial detention, most of them were finally released — 99 were then called to the stand for a first hearing at the Çaglayan courthouse.
Nevruz, 25, will have to wait until September, the date of her summons, to be heard in court. But the student of Kurdish origin can finally “breathe.” Sitting at a café in Istanbul, she recounts how she spent her detention “looking for the slightest twig growing in the middle of the concrete.” This is the image she keeps of Silivri, “this austere prison where you are thrown into a cell, crammed in with 45 other people.” All because she took part in a rally outside Saraçhane town hall.
“It was on March 23, the day İmamoğlu was arrested. Naturally, I joined the crowd to protest. The police rushed me, beat me up and handcuffed me with my hands behind my back. I found myself tackled to the ground with other young people, then sprayed with tear gas. My eyes were burning. We were then loaded into a van. One girl was screaming, she thought she was going to die.”
“In Turkey, we grew up with the expression ‘It’s cold in Silivri,’ referring to the prison.
Once in Silivri, solidarity saved them: “We supported each other. Some of the girls were injured. One of them had a broken foot. To my surprise, most of my fellow inmates had AKP sympathizers for parents. They didn’t know they’d been to Saraçhane. A sign of hope? “In Turkey, we grew up with the expression ‘It’s cold in Silivri,’ referring to the prison. Today, it’s no longer cold in Silivri,” Nevruz says with a smile.
