Identities have been announced of seven people who were detained in Muğla’s Ortaca and Seydikemer areas on October 4. It came out that the seven people detained and strip-searched by Turkish security forces in Muğla are brothers and cousins.

The detainees were then battered, stripped naked, forced to the ground and photographed on the grounds of alleged membership to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Security Directorate of Muğla called the families and informed them of the detention of seven people who have been identified as Ekrem Altay, Veysi Şengil, İsmail Bozdağ, Velat Asan, Mehmet Can Yiğiner, Mustafa Yiğiner and Adnan Yiğiner.

Seven people had been stripped naked with their hands tied on their back before they were detained as part of an investigation into the PKK in Turkey’s resort province of Muğla. Gendarmerie had reportedly stopped a car in a rural area upon a complaint that three people suspected of PKK links would carry out terrorist attack on multiple locations in Muğla province. The suspects had been stripped off their clothes on suspicion that they were carrying explosives and guns.

Turkish authorities had conducted direct talks with the jailed PKK chief Abdullah Öcalan for several years until a truce in effect collapsed in the summer of 2015. Since then, there have been heavy clashes between the PKK and Turkish security forces. More than 40,000 people, including 5,500 security force members, have been killed in four decades of fighting between the Turkish state and the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU.

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