Report on Removal Center Visits (January-June 2026)

This report draws together the findings of thirteen monitoring visits carried out between January and June 2026 to five removal centres: İzmir Harmandalı, Aydın, Antalya Döşemealtı, Ankara Akyurt and Çankırı. In the course of these visits, individual interviews were held with forty-five detainees of sixteen nationalities, and detention files were reviewed where access was granted. The visits sought to document conditions in administrative detention, provide direct legal assistance and assess compliance with national and international standards, including the right to due process, access to healthcare and protection against arbitrary detention and refoulement. The findings confirm the persistence of systemic problems recorded in earlier reporting cycles, among them notification of decisions in languages detainees do not understand, restricted and interrupted access to lawyers, healthcare that rarely extends beyond the infirmary, overcrowding and recurrent water cuts, and insufficient safeguards for vulnerable individuals, including lone women, families with children, and people living with disabilities or chronic illnesses.

Beyond these long-standing concerns, the report documents a number of issues that have newly emerged or intensified during the reporting period. These include structural changes to the interview rooms at İzmir Harmandalı that reduce both the confidentiality of consultations and the ability of monitors to observe the centre, removals that reportedly followed within days of a lawyer interview and despite expressed protection claims, new administrative barriers to the submission of petitions, and the reported confiscation of medication for chronic conditions. Taken together, these developments point to deepening structural weaknesses within Turkey’s detention system and raise serious concerns about compliance with fundamental human rights obligations.