The Human Rights Association (İHD) Van Branch has released its 2025 report on practices involving “extracting statements, conducting interviews, and recruitment through coercion and threats.”
Kemal Tibelek, a lawyer and member of the İHD Van Branch Legal Commission, stated that in the first ten months of the year, nine people in Van alone had applied to the association on the grounds of “recruitment, coercion, and threats.” Tibelek emphasized that these practices have become systematic since 2016 and constitute multiple crimes under the Turkish Penal Code—threats, torture, deprivation of liberty, and abuse of authority.
The IHD report stated that most of the criminal complaints were dismissed without sufficient investigation and that the necessary protective measures for the safety of the applicants were not taken.
Tibelek stated that detained individuals were forced into undocumented “interviews” without lawyers, and that cases of threats, abductions, and torture continued, adding, “These arbitrary practices must be stopped immediately; the perpetrators must be punished.”
November 11, 2025
ANF News