MAGARACIK, Turkiye: Finally home in Turkiye, Mehmet Erturk cannot eat the bread his wife has made him. After 20 years jailed in Syria, half his teeth are missing and the other half are threatening to fall out.
“It was torture after torture,” he said, miming the truncheon blows to the mouth the guards would give him at a notorious Damascus prison known as the Palestine Branch, where he spent part of his time incarcerated.
Arrested in 2004 for smuggling, Erturk finally made it back to his home to Magaracik on Monday evening, a village perched at the top of a winding road dotted with olive trees some 10 minutes from the Syrian border.
“My family thought I was dead,” said the 53-year-old, whose face and manner of walking make him look 20 years older.
On the night of his release, he heard gunshots and began to pray.
“We didn’t know what was happening outside. I thought I was finished,” he said.
Then he heard loud hammer blows and within minutes the prison gates were flung open by the militants who ousted Syrian strongman Bashar Assad.
“We hadn’t seen him for 11 years. We had no hope,” admitted his wife Hatice, sitting cross-legged outside their home preparing bread with their youngest daughter, who was barely six months old when her father was arrested.
After he was sentenced to 15 years, the prison authorities left this father-of-four to languish in an underground dungeon, at the mercy of brutal guards.
“Our bones would pop out of the socket when they hit our wrists with hammers,” he said.
“They also poured boiling water down the neck of one prisoner. The flesh from his neck just slid all the way down” to his hips, he said.
Pulling up his right trouser leg, he shows his right ankle, the skin darkened by the chain he wore.
“During the day, it was strictly forbidden to talk... there were cockroaches in the food. It was damp, it stank like a toilet,” he said, recalling days “without clothes or water or food.”
“It was like being in a coffin.”
And there was huge overcrowding.
“They put 115, 120 people in a cell for 20 people. Many people died of starvation,” he said.
And the guards just “threw the dead into rubbish skips.”
Erturk said he paid the price for the hatred Syria’s authorities bore for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who early in the war urged Assad to leave.
“We Turks suffered a lot of torture for that,” he said, saying he was refused medication on grounds of his nationality.
He sank so low he even hoped they would hang him.
“They were taking us to a new prison block and I saw a rope hanging from the ceiling and I said: ‘Thank God, I’m saved’,” he said.
As he recounted the horrors, he often broke off to thank “our dear president Erdogan” for him being back, alive with his family and not one of the countless victims of Syria’s brutal prison system.
Those could number more than 105,000 people since the war began in 2011, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
One of his sisters passes him a handful of old photos.
In one, he is pictured with a lifelong friend called Faruk Karga, who ended up in the same prison with him shortly after the picture was taken.
But Karga never came home.
“He died of starvation in prison in around 2018,” said Erturk.
“He weighed about 40 kilos.”
‘Endless torture’: Turkish inmate recalls hell of Syria jails
https://arab.news/2rfx9
‘Endless torture’: Turkish inmate recalls hell of Syria jails
- Arrested in 2004 for smuggling, Mehmet Erturk finally made it back to his home to Magaracik on Monday evening
- After he was sentenced to 15 years, the prison authorities left this father-of-four to languish in an underground dungeon
Trump says ‘hopefully’ no need for military action against Iran
- US president said he is speaking with Iran and left open the possibility of avoiding a military operation
- An Iranian military spokesman warned Tehran’s response to any US action would not be limited
PARIS: US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he hoped to avoid military action against Iran, which has threatened to strike American bases and aircraft carriers in response to any attack.
Trump said he is speaking with Iran and left open the possibility of avoiding a military operation after earlier warning time was “running out” for Tehran as the United States sends a large naval fleet to the region.
When asked if he would have talks with Iran, Trump told reporters: “I have had and I am planning on it.”
“We have a group headed out to a place called Iran, and hopefully we won’t have to use it,” the US president added, while speaking to media at the premiere of a documentary about his wife Melania.
As Brussels and Washington dialed up their rhetoric and Iran issued stark threats this week, UN chief Antonio Guterres has called for nuclear negotiations to “avoid a crisis that could have devastating consequences in the region.”
An Iranian military spokesman warned Tehran’s response to any US action would not be limited — as it was in June last year when American planes and missiles briefly joined Israel’s short air war against Iran — but would be a decisive response “delivered instantly.”
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Akraminia told state television US aircraft carriers have “serious vulnerabilities” and that numerous American bases in the Gulf region are “within the range of our medium-range missiles.”
“If such a miscalculation is made by the Americans, it will certainly not unfold the way Trump imagines — carrying out a quick operation and then, two hours later, tweeting that the operation is over,” he said.
An official in the Gulf, where states host US military sites, said that fears of a US strike on Iran are “very clear.”
“It would bring the region into chaos, it would hurt the economy not just in the region but in the US and cause oil and gas prices to skyrocket,” the official added.
‘Protests crushed in blood’
Qatar’s leader Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian held a call to discuss “efforts being made to de-escalate tensions and establish stability,” the Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.
The European Union, meanwhile, piled on the pressure by designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a “terrorist organization” over a deadly crackdown on recent mass protests.
“’Terrorist’ is indeed how you call a regime that crushes its own people’s protests in blood,” said EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, welcoming the “overdue” decision.
Though largely symbolic, the EU decision has already drawn a warning from Tehran.
Iran’s military slammed “the illogical, irresponsible and spite-driven action of the European Union,” alleging the bloc was acting out of “obedience” to Tehran’s arch-foes the United States and Israel.
Iranian officials have blamed the recent protest wave on the two countries, claiming their agents spurred “riots” and a “terrorist operation” that hijacked peaceful rallies sparked over economic grievances.
Rights groups have said thousands of people were killed during the protests by security forces, including the IRGC — the ideological arm of Tehran’s military.
In Tehran on Thursday, citizens expressed grim resignation.
“I think the war is inevitable and a change must happen. It can be for worse, or better. I am not sure,” said a 29-year-old waitress, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
“I am not in favor of war. I just want something to happen that would result in something better.”
Another 29-year-old woman, an unemployed resident of an upscale neighborhood in northern Tehran, said: “I believe that life has highs and lows and we are now at the lowest point.”
Trump had threatened military action if protesters were killed in the anti-government demonstrations that erupted in late December and peaked on January 8 and 9.
But his more recent statements have turned to Iran’s nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at making an atomic bomb.
On Wednesday, he said “time is running out” for Tehran to make a deal, warning the US naval strike group that arrived in Middle East waters on Monday was “ready, willing and able” to hit Iran.
Conflicting tolls
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said it has confirmed 6,479 people were killed in the protests, as Internet restrictions imposed on January 8 continue to slow verification.
But rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher, with estimates in the tens of thousands.
Iranian authorities acknowledge that thousands were killed during the protests, giving a toll of more than 3,000 deaths, but say the majority were members of the security forces or bystanders killed by “rioters.”
Billboards and banners have gone up in the capital Tehran to bolster the authorities’ messages. One massive poster appears to show an American aircraft carrier being destroyed.
