being held in the smaller of the two rooms in the big building, talked matter-of-factly about beatings: Sometimes the Palestinians and the Burmese get into fights. The detainees stop the fights themselves because if they get too big the guards will come and beat them. They beat us with a stick. They will hit the same person two or three times and slap and kick him.122 As this man said, the most immediate threat of violence inside the rooms is from other detainees. A 23-year-old Sri Lankan spoke about the tensions in the room and the fear of detainee-on-detainee violence. “There is no place to sleep. The sleeping arrangements create fighting. One of the fans doesn’t work. There is much smoking in there. There are great language problems and there is fighting between people from different countries.”123 As little control as is exercised inside the detention rooms, when the fighting escalates to a certain point, the guards do intervene, coming in the room and beating people with plastic truncheons until they quiet down. A “Burmese” man explains: “Everyone stopped when the police entered. When one man wanted to say something, the police struck him with the black plastic stick.”124 The Tunca detention center at Edirne does not have a doctor or nurse on site or even one that periodically visits. Only in emergencies do the guards take a detainee to the hospital because with only four guards on duty at any one shift they don’t have the manpower to do so. Edirne: Intentionally Inhuman and Degrading Treatment The head of the Passport and Foreigners Department of the Edirne Province Security Directorate, Chief of Police Ali Türedi, called the Tunca facility at Edirne “a bleeding wound.”125 122 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, B-109), Edirne, June 13, 2008. 123 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, E-159), Edirne, June 13, 2008. 124 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, E-160), Edirne, June 13, 2008. 125 Human Rights Watch interview with Chief of Police Ali Türedi, head of the Passport and Foreigners Department of the Edirne Province Security Directorate, Edirne, June 11, 2008. Stuck in a Revolving Door 56