From Police To Mücella Yapıcı: 'You have to serve Allah'

Cansu Yapıcı, who had been taken under custody with her mother Mücella Yapıcı, reported that one of the police officers harassing them said to her mother “You need to dedicate your soul (to die), you have to serve Allah”

Cansu Yapıcı, daughter of Mücella Yapıcı, cited to newspaper soL, the details of physical and psychological violence applied during police custody to Taksim Solidarity members who were taken under custody on July 8th for trying to enter Gezi Park which was actually reopened by Governor of Istanbul Hüseyin Avni Mutlu.

"We'll make detailed body search, drop your pants"
Cansu Yapıcı, whose mother Mücella Yapıcı was taken under custody along with her, declared that they have been exposed to verbal abuse of police officers from the very moment they were taken under custody, and told the following:

“At that moment my mother wasn't feeling good, almost fainting, a male police officer said to my mother 'You need to dedicate your soul (to die), you have to serve Allah'. A woman police officer said 'Wait, this is nothing compared to what we'll do to you'. One of our friends wasn't allowed to use restroom from the moment we were held on the police custody vehicle; they were constantly saying 'Soil your pants, why should we care'. After first body search when we descended to custody cells, they told that this time they were going to perform detailed body search. I objected to that, but they still said 'we'll perform detailed body search, drop your pants'. The made us drop our pants till our knees and then drop our underpants and they made us bend forward. They did the same thing to my 62 years old mother."

"We had to put a great struggle to take our medications back"
“After that once again we weren't allowed to use the restroom for 7-8 hours. When we demanded to go to restroom they constantly said 'soil your pants, why should we care, do it to on the cell floor'. Males were held in a larger cell, females were held in smaller cells two by two. I was with my mother. Ceiling of our cell had a little opening for air to come in; when cells started to protest the situation, especially the need for restroom, they took my mother to another cell with no opening for air. My mom regularly uses 10-15 pills. She is a cardiac patient. We had to put another struggle get our medications. The first two days they treated us brutally."

"Soil your pants!"
“When they took us to restroom later, which was a men's restroom, we saw that there was a camera. We protested against that too, and once again they subjected us to verbal abuse saying that 'soil your pants'. During the whole custody period, police officers were constantly saying 'you'll stay here for longer, it's undecided when you will be released' in order to exert psychological pressure."

"This costs state money"
President of Istanbul Chamber of Electrical Engineers (EMO) Beyza Metin as well told soL newspaper what they went through:

“On purpose they weren't giving us water. They gave us half a liter or less water per day and it wasn't sufficient. There were times they didn't allow us to use restrooms at all and we had to wait 3-4 hours. They were arranging on purpose that there wasn't any female police officers while they took us to restroom, they did this every single time. They limited our phone calls to just 30 seconds. They took the phone from my hand by force and harassed by saying 'This costs state money'. Imagine, we were unable to communicate with anybody.

There, among us, they put a the stongest pressure on Mücella Yapıcı, and they tried to demoralize her. They separated her from her daughter, and put her in a cell in isolation. We encountered serious psychological pressure mechanism.”

http://haber.sol.org.tr/devlet-ve-siyaset/polisten-mucella-yapiciya-allaha-hizmet-etmen-gerekiyor-haberi-76358