ANTALYA – The Lawyers for Freedom Association (ÖHD) Antalya Branch released a report on rights violations in Antalya prisons during the first five months of 2025. The report highlights that prisoners are subjected to additional punishments within prisons and are denied access to their right to health care.
According to the report, prisoners in five prisons around Antalya face serious barriers to accessing medical services. The findings, prepared by ÖHD lawyers based on direct complaints, letters, and visits to Antalya High Security Closed Prison, Antalya S-Type, Manavgat S-Type, Burdur High Security and Alanya L-Type prisons, show delays in hospital referrals, often dependent on the availability of the gendarmerie rather than medical urgency. Dental referrals experience even longer waiting times.
The report also points to significant shortcomings in infirmary services. Prisoners wait weeks to see a doctor, with only one often absent physician available, and examinations described as superficial and inadequate. Emergency medications are delayed, and chronic patients face interruptions in their treatments, worsening their conditions.
Handcuffing practices differ across prisons; single handcuffs are used in some, double handcuffs in others, particularly during hospital transfers, severely restricting prisoners’ physical movement and negatively affecting their treatment.
A particularly severe violation occurs in Burdur High Security Prison, where prisoners are forced to undergo invasive oral cavity searches before hospital transfers. Those refusing these searches are denied medical access, regardless of the urgency of their condition.
The report also details censorship and delays of Kurdish letters, limited water access, poor water quality, and insufficient hygiene materials.
ÖHD concludes with demands including the end of torture and inhumane practices by prison authorities, improvements to prison conditions according to national and international law, immediate cessation of humiliating search procedures, increased medical staff and better health transportation, provision of adequate hygiene materials, respect for communication rights, and establishment of independent monitoring mechanisms to prevent escalating violations and torture. Report also stressed the situation of ill prisoners and demand to improvement.