Lawyer Yunus Emre Şahan a member of the Free Lawyers Association (ÖHD) spoke to ANF about the Forensic Medicine Institute (ATK) reports and about the increasing number of murders and deaths in prisons. "ATK doctors take the Hippocratic oath, but unfortunately they act according to political conditions. They know that prisoners in poor health conditions cannot stay in prison, but they have to publish these reports in line with political demands."

Lawyer Şahan said that preventing the right to access to health in prison has serious consequences and gave an example. "We know that there is a violation of the right to health because different prisoners in different jails tell us the same thing. We visited Afyon Bolvadin Prison last week. A ward of 14 people, including prisoners with chronic illnesses, goes to the infirmary. The doctor prescribed certain medicines, but 5 days later, when we went to visit the prison, the medicines had still not been given. This is how deaths happen. Some people's physiology can't handle certain diseases, or those with chronic diseases can die even because of a minor flu."

Lawyer Şahan said: "Some prisons are so old that they couldn’t house people in them, and in some prisons rats are running around in the wards where the prisoners are kept."

The lawyer underlined that “as the media often said, Turkey is an open prison. Now think about closed prisons. A normal prisoner should stay in prison in an environment worthy of human dignity after receiving a prison sentence. If the state gives such a sentence, it has to provide these conditions. This is how violations of rights come into play. Such as the lack of health, housing, sports opportunities.”

Evaluating the AKP-MHP government's failure to address deaths and violations of rights in prisons because of its implementation of an "enemy policy", lawyer Yunus Emre Şahan said: "Even the guards have accepted this situation and look at the other side as the enemy. The public is unaware of what is going on because the government also controls the media. Many people cannot see these violations of rights."