A prison in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakır province, remembered for the torture perpetrated there during and after the 1980 coup, is being turned into a museum. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the decision during a visit to the province on Sunday.
Erdoğan said the prison was evacuated by its original owner, the Justice Ministry, and handed over to the Culture and Tourism Ministry on Sunday. He said the latter designed a restoration project for the building. He added that along with the museum, the complex will house a library and cultural and arts venues.
The place, which was officially known as Diyarbakır Prison No. 5, was a vivid symbol of the oppression by the military junta, which took power on September 12, 1980. The Committee to Investigate the Torture and Abuse of Prisoners in the 1980s and it There was talk of converting the prison into a museum, although plans have been long delayed.
The prison housed people wrongly convicted or imprisoned by the military junta in the 1980s, mostly Kurdish political prisoners who were victims of ongoing torture by the prison’s military administration. It was controlled by the junta for years and after a transition to a civilian regime, its administration was transferred to the Ministry of Justice.
It was synonymous with torture for many of the locals who survived there, in an attempt by the junta to intimidate the local Kurdish community.
Within two years of the 1980s, large numbers of inmates died in prison from torture, infectious diseases, and suicide. Although no official figures are available, it is estimated that more than 30 people died in that two-year period. Families of victims claim the deaths were not properly investigated at the time or were covered up by officials.
Orhan Miroğlu, a former MP for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), was among those detained and has given an account of conditions in the prison, where they were not allowed to shower for two years and were forced to lie naked on shards of ice in the courtyard to crawl. Bayram Bozyel, who was imprisoned for five years until 1987, is among the advocates of turning the prison into a museum. Bozyel recently told Demirören News Agency (DHA) that the prison is “an important center of remembrance for Türkiye.” “They used methods of torture there, perhaps the first of their kind in the world. People were subjected to unimaginable tortures,” he said. Bozyel said he welcomes the conversion and would be happy to see the site transformed into a place “where future generations can learn lessons from what happened here.”
