Ex-prisoner in Syria:

“Our bones have jumped out of joint”

Former prisoner Mehmet Ertürk was tortured in Syria.

(Bild: AFP/Yasin Akgul)

Mehmet Ertürk has been released from a Syrian prison after almost 21 years in custody. He has sunken cheeks and half of his teeth are missing. "It was torture, constant torture," he said in an interview. The guards hit him in the mouth with a truncheon, for example.

Until recently, the 53-year-old Turk was held in an underground dungeon in Damascus. The prison authorities did not care that his sentence for smuggling was supposed to end in 2019. The guards were brutal and merciless, said Ertürk: "It was strictly forbidden to speak during the day, there were cockroaches in the food. It was damp, it stank like a toilet." Time and again there were days "without clothes or water or food".

Bodies "thrown into garbage cans"
Between 115 and 120 people were put in a cell that was designed for 20. Many starved to death and their bodies were "thrown into garbage cans". "They poured boiling hot water over the neck of one prisoner. The flesh slipped off his neck," Ertürk recalled.

Mehmet Ertürk in his home village in Turkey

(Bild: AFP/Yasin Akgul)

He shows journalists old photos.

(Bild: AFP/Yasin Akgul)

"Our bones popped out of joint when they hit our wrists with hammers." He himself was deprived of medicine because of his nationality. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had called on Syrian ruler Assad to step down at the beginning of the civil war. "We Turks have been tortured a lot because of this."

We didn't know what was happening outside. I thought this was the end for me.

Mehmet Ertürk über seine Befreiung 

Hoping for death
Ertürk's hopelessness was so great that he wished for death. "They took us to a new prison wing and I saw a rope hanging from the ceiling and thought: thank God, I'm saved."

The night he was released, the father of four heard gunshots and began to pray: "We didn't know what was happening outside. I thought this was the end for me." Finally, he heard loud hammer blows and within a few minutes the Islamist fighters had broken down the prison gates and freed the prisoners.

Ertürk has now returned to his family in his home village. This is only ten minutes away from the Syrian border. "My family thought I was dead," said the 53-year-old. "We had no hope," confirmed his wife Hatice. Etürk's youngest daughter was just six months old when she was detained.