In the E Type prison in the province of Bitlis in Northern Kurdistan, 50 inmates are said to have tested positive for the coronavirus. Relatives made this statement to ANF after telephone calls with some prisoners. It is unclear how they are doing. A ward is said to have been completely quarantined.

Neither ANF nor the legal counsel of the inmates managed to reach the prison management. Family members of the prisoners also received no information about the state of health of their relatives. It is not known how many prisoners in Turkish prisons are affected by the Corona pandemic in total.

On June 17, Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül said that 452 prisoners have been infected with the virus so far. Six of them died as a result of infection, while 374 others had recovered. The number of active cases was reported by Gül as 72. For eight weeks, no information on corona numbers from the prisons has been given.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) again expressed doubts about the figures from the Ministry of Health, saying that these “do not reflect the true state of affairs in the country". The association assumes ten times more active Covid-19 cases, i.e. the number of people currently infected, than officially stated.