POLITICAL PRISONER

Jailed Kurdish politician ‘criminally responsible’ despite dementia


Ahval
Feb 17 2022 

Kurdish politician Aysel Tuğluk, who has been diagnosed with dementia while behind bars in Turkey since 2016, can still be held criminally responsible, the Turkish Forensic Science Institute (ATK) found in a report this week.

Last month, over 40 national and international human rights organisations and bar associations called on the United Nations to press for Tuğluk’s release, saying the Turkish authorities were “failing to act in accordance with the law and international standards’’.

Lawyers of Tuğluk, a former co-chair and deputy for the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the second-largest opposition group in Turkey’s parliament, have submitted several appeals for her release on health grounds after she was diagnosed with dementia and early-stage Alzheimer’s in March 2021.

Following the most recent appeal, Tuğluk was transferred to the ATK for consultations for a maximum duration of 15 days. Three days later, the ATK completed its assessment and issued a 25-page report. She was returned to the Kandıra Prison in İzmit on Feb. 5.

In the first 15 pages of the report, the ATK detailed accusations against Tuğluk instead of medical findings, local media including the Mezopotamya news agency reported on Wednesday. In the remaining pages, Tuğluk’s previous consultations and medical reports were included.

The forensic institute diagnosed Tuğluk with mild cognitive impairment and said she could remain in prison in her condition.

“No medical findings or documents were encountered to signify that (Tuğluk) had any mental disorder to the extent that would affect her criminal responsibility in the period pertaining to the criminal acts,” the ATK said in its report, according to Mezopotamya. “(Tuğluk) has full criminal responsibility in our opinion and assessment.”

The politician was arrested in December 2016 shortly following the detention of other co-chairs and several deputies of the HDP. Tuğluk faced terrorism charges for speeches she made in her capacity of co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), a majority-Kurdish grassroots organisation. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Tuğluk’s family believes her condition was triggered by traumatic events since her arrest, including events surrounding the death of her mother in 2017. Far-right groups attacked the funeral and her family was forced to unearth the mother’s body to be buried elsewhere.

Tuğluk has been suffering from memory loss and anomic aphasia, according to a report issued by a public hospital in the northwestern İzmit province on March 8, 2021. The veteran Kurdish politician was also having problems completing her daily routines, it said. Tuğluk scored 11 points in a dementia test where 25 points indicated normal cognitive capacity and below 10 points indicated severe dementia.

In a follow up report by a public research hospital on March 24, Tuğluk was diagnosed with blood pressure issues. The second report included a note by her doctors advising care due to drug interactions with her dementia medication.

Another report issued in April detailed Tuğluk’s cognitive decline, saying she had significant deterioration in her learning and memory function, while retaining most of her recorded memory.

On June 8, a primary care physician at the prison infirmary entered a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer into the national healthcare tracking system

In July, the research hospital issued another report saying Tuğluk’s condition was chronic and degenerative, that she was unfit to see out her daily routine independently, and that she could not receive the care she needed in prison.

However, the ATK said in a report dated September 2021 that Tuğluk had “attempted to make herself look worse than she was”.

“Psychopathology to the extent to require a delay to execution of sentencing was not detected,” the ATK said. Tuğluk’s spatial orientation was sufficient while her temporal orientation was “partially sufficient”, it said.

A public hospital examined Tuğluk in December last year and found further deterioration in her condition, according to a report it published.

Tuğluk had lost significant details of her personal life, her recorded memory had been affected, her ability to make calculations was diminished and her speech patterns had started to show deteriorations in content and flow, the hospital said.