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Source: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/authors/amberin-zaman-3.html
Torture on the Rise in Erdogan's Turkey
(Al-Monitor) Amberin Zaman - Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power 18 years ago pledging "zero tolerance" for torture. For a brief time, there was "real hope," said Sebnem Korur Fincanci, a forensics doctor and president of Turkey's Human Rights Foundation. But torture is back "in its cruelest forms," Fincanci told Al-Monitor. The gutting of independent media and the ongoing jailing of critical journalists means that the abuses go unreported. Beyond Turkey's borders in northern Syria, where Turkish forces occupy broad swaths of territory, reports of ill-treatment, sexual abuse and extrajudicial killings carried out by Turkish-supervised Syrian rebels have been described as "war crimes" by the UN.