MAGARACIK, Turkiye: Finally home in Turkiye, Mehmet Erturk cannot eat the bread his wife has made him. After 20 years jailed in Syria, half his teeth are missing and the other half are threatening to fall out.
鈥淚t was torture after torture,鈥� he said, miming the truncheon blows to the mouth the guards would give him at a notorious Damascus prison known as the Palestine Branch, where he spent part of his time incarcerated.
Arrested in 2004 for smuggling, Erturk finally made it back to his home to Magaracik on Monday evening, a village perched at the top of a winding road dotted with olive trees some 10 minutes from the Syrian border.
鈥淢y family thought I was dead,鈥� said the 53-year-old, whose face and manner of walking make him look 20 years older.
On the night of his release, he heard gunshots and began to pray.
鈥淲e didn鈥檛 know what was happening outside. I thought I was finished,鈥� he said.
Then he heard loud hammer blows and within minutes the prison gates were flung open by the militants who ousted Syrian strongman Bashar Assad.
鈥淲e hadn鈥檛 seen him for 11 years. We had no hope,鈥� admitted his wife Hatice, sitting cross-legged outside their home preparing bread with their youngest daughter, who was barely six months old when her father was arrested.
After he was sentenced to 15 years, the prison authorities left this father-of-four to languish in an underground dungeon, at the mercy of brutal guards.
鈥淥ur bones would pop out of the socket when they hit our wrists with hammers,鈥� he said.
鈥淭hey also poured boiling water down the neck of one prisoner. The flesh from his neck just slid all the way down鈥� to his hips, he said.
Pulling up his right trouser leg, he shows his right ankle, the skin darkened by the chain he wore.
鈥淒uring the day, it was strictly forbidden to talk... there were cockroaches in the food. It was damp, it stank like a toilet,鈥� he said, recalling days 鈥渨ithout clothes or water or food.鈥�
鈥淚t was like being in a coffin.鈥�
And there was huge overcrowding.
鈥淭hey put 115, 120 people in a cell for 20 people. Many people died of starvation,鈥� he said.
And the guards just 鈥渢hrew the dead into rubbish skips.鈥�
Erturk said he paid the price for the hatred Syria鈥檚 authorities bore for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who early in the war urged Assad to leave.
鈥淲e Turks suffered a lot of torture for that,鈥� he said, saying he was refused medication on grounds of his nationality.
He sank so low he even hoped they would hang him.
鈥淭hey were taking us to a new prison block and I saw a rope hanging from the ceiling and I said: 鈥楾hank God, I鈥檓 saved鈥�,鈥� he said.
As he recounted the horrors, he often broke off to thank 鈥渙ur dear president Erdogan鈥� for him being back, alive with his family and not one of the countless victims of Syria鈥檚 brutal prison system.
Those could number more than 105,000 people since the war began in 2011, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
One of his sisters passes him a handful of old photos.
In one, he is pictured with a lifelong friend called Faruk Karga, who ended up in the same prison with him shortly after the picture was taken.
But Karga never came home.
鈥淗e died of starvation in prison in around 2018,鈥� said Erturk.
鈥淗e weighed about 40 kilos.鈥�