Death Fast, Bloody Iftar: The “Return to Life” Operations

In 2004, when we were training at the Gendarmerie Schools Command, we took courses on the external protection of prisons within the gendarmerie’s administrative duties. Some of these courses took the form of practical training in a model prison on the campus of the Gendarmerie Schools Command, an exact but scaled-down replica of an F-type prison.

I found the courses boring. But at the same time, since hundreds of books and thousands of letters seized during the Return to Life Operations were displayed in this model prison, I remember reading these documents with curiosity, even noting the names of some books and looking for them in Ankara’s second-hand bookshops. Because I received no satisfactory answers to some questions I asked during the lessons, I always remained interested in the subject.

In the operations carried out simultaneously on 19–22 December 2000 in 20 different prisons, on the blocks housing political detainees and convicts, 28 detainees and 2 soldiers lost their lives, and hundreds of convicts and detainees, including soldiers, were injured.

At that time the DSP–MHP–ANAP coalition was in power. The Prime Minister was Bülent Ecevit, the Chief of General Staff Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu, the Minister of Justice Hikmet Sami Türk, the Interior Minister Sadettin Tantan, the Gendarmerie General Commander Aytaç Yalman, the MİT Undersecretary Şenkal Atasagun and the Director General of Prisons and Detention Houses Ali Suat Ertosun.

Although these names held executive office, the operations were carried out as a result of (recommendation) decisions of the National Security Council. The main rationale was that the prisons were being used as schools, especially by left-wing groups. While the state expected the prisoners of the left-wing political line it had jailed to be reformed or to remain passive, the opposite was happening; in the famous phrase of the time: ‘He went in a sympathiser and came out a militant.’

The General Situation Before the Operation

Prisons holding political prisoners are naturally a nest of opposition. For this reason, left-wing detained opponents adopted the path of continuing their political struggle and making political propaganda in prisons, aiming, even as detainees, to set an example to their base through their actions and somehow to steer society. It is an undeniable fact that after the 12 September coup, left-wing groups were the structures that kept the culture of organised action in prisons most alive.

By the 1990s, when human rights violations in Türkiye peaked and the secret mechanism known as the deep state carried out extrajudicial executions and operations in every field, prison actions were no longer confined to cell walls but interacted in one way or another with the outside.

The fact that detainees and convicts with left-wing ideological views acted in an organised way in the wards they shared and were active in a way that affected the outside had disturbed the system. When the actions are examined, hunger strikes and death fasts stand out, while grave actions such as self-immolation also took place. When the reasons for the actions are examined, protests against incidents in other prisons, strip searches, torture and ill-treatment, transfers to distant cities, the isolation punishments called ‘coffins’, and rights violations such as housing far too many people in small wards come first. For example, in 1999, 100–150 people were staying in wards for 30–35 people. This was conveyed to the administration and a request was made to open the empty wards for use, but it was refused. A hunger strike was then held for a while, and when it became clear it would yield no result, the prisoners in one ward knocked down the partition wall with the neighbouring ward and began using that empty ward too.

On the other hand, it can also be seen that in this period the state partly lost control in the prisons. Although it was not much on the agenda, dozens of prisoners lost their lives as a result of harsh interventions in riots after 1990. The harsh measures taken in other prisons after each incident to prevent the riots from spreading also caused anger to build up. The failure to improve the inadequate physical conditions of prisons neglected for years, the unqualified and untrained staff, and the increase in escapes and in materials such as weapons and drugs smuggled inside are directly connected.

Preparing Public Opinion and the Execution Phase

When the print and visual media of the time are examined, it can be seen that before the operation, news that the prisons had got out of control was intensively disseminated from a single centre. Also in this context, three months before the operation, mafia groups started major riots in some prisons. The most famous of these riots is the Uşak Prison riot of 2 November 2000. In the riot started by the Ergin brothers, leaders of the Karagümrük Gang, many staff were taken hostage, and five convicts accused of being Alaattin Çakıcı’s men were executed with pistols and then thrown out of windows in front of the cameras. The Ergin brothers’ words from the prison window during the riot, “Ask Brigadier General Veli Küçük about me; this state had me shoot Mustafa Duyar”, became an issue in later years.

The Return to Life Operations, which took place after 28 February, at the time Abdullah Öcalan was handed over to Türkiye, at a time when ulusalcı (ultranationalist) cadres were very strong, were carried out by the Gendarmerie General Command, that is the TSK, under the patronage of Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Türk of the Democratic Left Party. The operation was personally directed by the Gendarmerie General Command’s Head of Operations, Major General Osman Özbek, who had come to the fore with his speech in Erzurum during the 28 February process. While 10,000 gendarmerie personnel took part in the operation, commando battalions were sent to the prisons to be raided. Since the detainees and convicts were physically in the hands of the administration, the operation should have been planned and carried out in a way that would not endanger human life; instead it led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries. In the end, international reports recorded that this operation was not well planned, was not properly implemented and did not use proportionate force.

Finally, right after the operation, with the amnesty law known to the public as the “Rahşan Amnesty”, the number of detainees and convicts in prisons fell from 70,000 to 40,000. Of course, one cannot help asking: if you were going to pass an amnesty law, why did many prisoners covered by that amnesty lose their lives or become disabled?

Twenty-one years have passed, and what happened during the operations is still waiting to be properly investigated. But today, when Türkiye’s record on law and human rights has become such that it makes even the period of the Return to Life Operation look good, I do not think this expectation means anything. For now, what falls to our share from this controversial operation is one of the great collective traumas of our recent history: the seriously injured, those who lost their lives and hair-raising images.