Missing soldiers being tortured, says Amnesty

Twelve days on from Turkey’s failed coup, all Rabia Katran wants is a sign that her brother is still alive.

Ragip Enes Katran, 20, was two days into a summer school at the Yalova military academy – an elite air force training college in Istanbul – when the revolt started. Since then the family have heard nothing.

Neither lawyers acting for the almost 6000 soldiers who have been detained nor the academy can tell them where he is.

Students from the Yalova and Kuleli military academies were caught up in the coup attempt in Istanbul despite the fact that they do not hold military ranks.

Yalova students have told lawyers that they were bused to the Bosphorus bridge shortly before midnight, having been told they were going on a military exercise. They arrived in the middle of a battle as soldiers fired on protesters.

When protesters realised that the students were not willingly taking part in the coup attempt, they helped them to escape into the emergency lane at the side of the bridge. They were arrested in the roundup that began last Sunday.

Amnesty International has released a report detailing multiple accounts of torture, including severe beatings and rapes, of soldiers in custody. It has heard of soldiers being uncontactable since July 15.

The military school system is at the centre of the investigation into the alleged infiltration of the military by Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric who President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused of being behind the coup attempt. Gulen has lived in the United States since 1999.

The scale of the post-coup arrests means that it is almost impossible to find out how many men are still missing. The lawyers assigned to their cases are often working pro bono and are not allowed to see their clients’ case files or the charges against them before they appear in court.

A government spokesman dismissed the Amnesty report.