(Istanbul, September 4, 2025) - The trial of 13 law enforcement officers charged with the death in custody of Ahmet Güreşçi and the torture of his older brother Sabri Güreşçi on February 11, 2023, offers a rare opportunity for justice, Human Rights Watch said today. The first hearing in the trial begins on September 9, 2025, in First Assize Court in the southern province of Hatay.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented the case of the two men in a report about abuses by police and gendarmes in rural areas, in the aftermath of the devasting February 6, 2023 earthquakes in Hatay and the surrounding region. The case is among the most egregious in a pattern of security forces mistreating people they accused of theft during that period.
"The trial of 13 gendarmes in connection with the death in custody of Ahmet Güreşçi and the torture of Sabri Güreşçi is a test of whether the authorities are willing to deliver justice for these egregious crimes," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Given Türkiye's impunity for abuses by police, gendarmes and soldiers, it is important to send a clear message that the absolute prohibition on torture in custody is to be respected and enforced."
Gendarmes arrested Sabri Güreşçi, 27, and Ahmet Güreşçi, 37 at the time, in the Büyükburç district of Altınözü, Hatay province, on February 11, 2023, on suspicion of looting and other crimes. Sabri Güreşçi and four others arrested in the same investigation testified before prosecutors that they were taken to a storage room rather than a cell at the Altınözü Central District Gendarmerie Station Command.
They allege that there, gendarmes, who were later identified by Sabri, tortured him and Ahmet, including by beating them with batons and cudgels, squeezing their testicles, and attempting to rape them with batons, in an effort to make them confess to crimes. They allege that as a result of the beating Ahmet lost consciousness and ultimately died.
Hospital records and security camera footage show that gendarmes took Ahmet to hospital wrapped in a blanket and at 6:15 p.m. that day a doctor pronounced him dead after failed efforts to revive him.
İbrahim Güreşçi, the father of the two men, testified to the prosecutor that he had waited outside the gendarmerie station for news of his sons, had seen gendarmes carry a body wrapped in a blanket out of the station and had followed them to the hospital fearing it might be his son Sabri.
Prevented from entering the hospital, he returned the next morning and after persuading an official to let him see if his son was among the bodies in the morgue, was shown Ahmet's corpse which had visible signs of multiple injuries. He alleges that gendarmes told him that Ahmet had been released and later attacked by members of the public.
A report from Türkiye's Forensic Medicine Institute based on autopsy results, which included multiple injuries and bruising to Ahmet Güreşçi's body, limbs and head, determined that he died as a result of a brain hemorrhage caused by blows to the head. Sabri Güreşçi secured a report from the Çukurova Hospital forensic medicine department, which determined that the injuries, bruising and broken bones on his body were commensurate with his allegation that gendarmes had beaten him.
The Hatay prosecutor's indictment, dated February 20, 2025, and seen by Human Rights Watch, charges 13 members of the gendarmerie of various ranks with torture resulting in Ahmet Güreşçi's death, as well as the torture of Sabri Güreşçi resulting a broken bone. The gendarmeries could face sentences up to aggravated life imprisonment for Ahmet Güreşçi's death and up to 15 years for torturing his brother.
The 13 gendarmes deny the accusations. They allege that the brothers already bore signs of injuries on arrest, that Ahmet Güreşçi's blows to the head were from banging his head against a metal bar in the vehicle he was placed in after arrest or against a wall in the gendarmerie station.
Multiple witnesses refuted the gendarmes' allegations, and the forensic medical reports alone provide clear evidence of torture, Human Rights Watch said.
None of the gendarmes were arrested or held in pretrial detention during the criminal and administrative investigations of their actions. While media reported that three were initially suspended from duty, lawyers for the family told Human Rights Watch that they believe that most or all remain on active duty. While there are immense obstacles to the effective investigation of torture and ill-treatment and deaths in custody in Türkiye and few prosecutions, a May 8 trial verdict in Hatay province proved an exception. The Hatay Fifth Assize Court convicted four ranked soldiers at the time stationed at the Kavalcık Sehit Er Gökhan Çakır Border Army Station to life in prison on charges of torturing to death two Syrian nationals Abdurrezzak Kastal and Abdulsettar Elhaccar and torturing four others who had crossed the border into Türkiye on March 11, 2023.
Human Rights Watch had documented the cases in a April 2023 report. The four soldiers remain in detention and their conviction is subject to an appeal.
"Sabri Güreşçi and his family have a right to justice, and this trial also has national implications," Williamson, said. "Tolerance and acquiesce in police abuses, torture and other serious human rights violations has been on the rise in Türkiye, and this trial provides hope that it will end."
