Exposing torture and helping victims seek justice has been a major field of activity for Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) over the past three decades. The group has filed countless lawsuits, particularly against police officers in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast. But one application the IHD received in late April was nothing like what it was accustomed to. The alleged victims of torture were police officers themselves. Families and lawyers reached out to the IHD through email and social media to convey the allegations.

On April 26, Turkey witnessed the largest single purge in the police since the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, which the government blames on US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers, who have been entrenched mostly in the police and the judiciary. Some 9,000 police officers were suspended from office, while more than a thousand people, including police, teachers and other public servants, were detained. The torture allegations relayed to the IHD pertained to this latest wave of the crackdown.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, IHD co-chair Ozturk Turkdogan detailed the claims of one of the police officers, which in fact reveal how an entire group of detainees had been allegedly maltreated. The claims figure also in the detainee’s interrogation report, meaning that the authorities are aware of the allegations. The police officer, who has requested anonymity, said that groups of 15 detainees were kept in 6-square-meter (64-square-feet) rooms in the police’s financial crimes unit rather than in the anti-terror department. Late at night, when most of the staff was gone, policemen would come and take the detainees one by one to a special room for interrogation, stripping them naked, hooding them with plastic bags and threatening sexual assault with bottles, according to the account. Two detainees who got sick kept vomiting for days, but were denied medical treatment, the officer claimed.

Commenting on the allegations, Turkdogan said, “Turkey had made significant progress in efforts to stamp out torture. As part of those efforts, anti-terror departments — where torture was rife — were equipped with cameras. Those people were taken to the financial crimes department because there were no cameras there.” He explained that the said group remained in police custody for a whole two weeks after the government extended detention periods via legislative decrees, made possible by the state of emergency declared after the coup attempt. “This is a long period that allows for the effacing of torture traces,” he said.