In Turkey, a collective of former detainees hopes to be able to convert the former military prison number five in the city of Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city in the east of the country, into a “museum of shame”.
In eastern Turkey, in Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city, the future of a former prison is at stake. Specifically, the infamous number five military prison, one of the ten worst places of detention in the world according to the Times. An infamous place of detention whose construction was completed just before the 1980 coup and where the Turkish army tortured several thousand opponents, mostly Kurds.
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The prison was closed in October 2022. It is located in the heart of the city, with its high walls now decrepit topped with sandbags and barbed wire, its sinister metal gate, its watchtower. Even the guards were aware of the cruelty that reigned there. In this prison, they said: “Here God does not exist and his prophets are on leave”, explains Nuri Sinir, a former prisoner. Today he took the lead of a group of former prisoners who want this place to become a Museum of shame. And a place of memory to pay homage to those who died there.
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For example, they want the instruments of torture to be exhibited, the abuses that were taking place to be shown. “I’ll give you a little examplesays former detainee Nuri Sinir. They brought me back, tied by my feet and there was a hole with excrement and they put my head in it several times. If it becomes a museum, I wish there was a statue that represents that.”
Fight against oblivion
Beatings, rapes, torture with cigarettes, mock executions, trials, deprivation of water or food… The former prisoners want everything to be recorded. So that new generations know what happened, and prevent the repetition of barbarism.
If these former prisoners are mobilizing it is because they fear that the Turkish government will take control of the future of the building. The authorities want to turn it into a cultural center. Out of the question for the Kurds, who denounce an attempt to erase their identity once again. They were indeed tortured there to make “good Turks”. And they were not alone in the jails:
“Armenians, Chaldeans, Nestorians, Syriacs, Muslims, it doesn’t matter what religion. They didn’t accept anything, human existence, Kurdish existence, Armenian existence, other people’s existence. Everyone had to be Turkish” , lists Nuri Sinir. It is therefore against oblivion but also, they say, for all these cultures that they are fighting today.