Pour The Acid Haydar (2005)
Dök Asidi Haydar
Video
32'

The video titled “Pour the Acid Haydar” from the artists “video portraits” series,  is a documentary work based on witnessing. 
 

The work, is based on the woman A who has been taken under surveillance several times between 1990 and 1994 (while she was 16 up to 20) and the torture she has gone through.

The verbal, physical torture she has faced is being transmitted to the audience by the witnessing of the woman A. After the 4^th Surveillance she is sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment. The content of the work belongs to the previous period of the court decision. A goes through the medical check and reports the torture marks on her body. She opens an action for damages and she wins. She has been tortured several times during her imprisonment. She joins the starving-to-death strike against the F-type* prisons in 2001. On her 240^th day she gets released for six months although she has not asked for. The damages of the strike results as the Wernicke Korsakoff** illness, so that she starts to have medical treatment. The report she gets states that the illness is a permanent type and she must not to be send to the prison. She has lost 90 percent of her sight and because of the attacks she has been through in the prison her ears do not function properly thus only 50 percent of hearing process is being realized. In year 2003 she and many others get the report from the court hospital stating that they have been cured and can be put back in prisons. A is a run-away from that time. Her family gets threatened and harassed.  Her Lawyers apply to the ECHR***, and ECHR comes to a decision of postponing her imprisonment for a while, but Turkey does not care about this decision. A gets another medical check in an objective hospital by the requirement of ECHR and the result is the same. For that reason ECHR asks for her life-long release. A cannot properly remember the past neither can state what happens now. The only thing she remembers in detail is the tortures she has been through.

A’s case is still continuing…****

*F-type prisons: objecting physical and mental isolation, designed for one person. Through the scientific researches, it has been stated that those prisons cause physical, mental damage.

** Wernicke Korsakoff : *Wernicke Korsakov, is a result of long-time-starvation and causes problems of seeing, hearing, walking also memory. For example, if the central nerve system is damaged, the person will have a brain of a five-year-old child, without any memory and in need of aid of others to maintain his or her daily life.

***ECHR: European Court of Human Rights  

**** A’s identity is hidden since her case is still on continuation.