Monsters We Breed

And after that, the three of us that were on the bus were forced to yell, “I love the Turkish police!” and “I love the Turkish nation!” as they barked at us to say it louder and louder. It didn’t end after the insults and beatings either.

It seemed like things were getting a little calmer but then they brought in another friend. The kid’s nose was broken. When I asked the kid why he didn’t protect his nose, he told me that two people held him by force and the third person punched him in the nose three times.

After that, a friend called Mustafa from Bahcesehir University got brought in. Twenty cops had attacked him and he was having a hard time standing up. He was under custody but that wasn’t enough. They hit him on the head with their helmets and that wasn’t enough either so they hit his head against the bus windows while they were bringing him in.

He got seated as they were handcuffing him behind his back and I saw his head bleeding so I went up to him with a rag. It was the t-shirt of the guy who had his nose broken. As I held it up to his head to stop the bleeding, a cop named “Suleyman” cursed at me and told me to “fuck off.” I told him that he was bleeding.

He said, “let him bleed.”

They were holding him handcuffed in that injured condition and after we pleaded to a few officers, one of them finally un-cuffed him.

After that we were taken to the hospital and then to the jailhouse. And actually, the second most heart breaking thing happened while we were being questioned at the jailhouse. Mustafa asked me, “Did they hit me on the bus? What happened?” My friend couldn’t remember. He was completely out of his mind while he was on the police bus and to top it off, while we were on the bus, they would not let us go into the restroom and only gave us one bottle of water.

When we got to the jailhouse there was an army of lawyers and the police were finally talking to us with respect. I would like to thank everyone who attended to the lawyers, our friends who helped them, and everyone who worried about us.