Enhancing skills and knowledge With the Istanbul Protocol in place, ensuring that doctors, judges, prosecutors and lawyers as well as immigration officials around the world are aware of it and know how to use it in legal proceedings was a much-needed step forward in the prevention of torture. Consider the case of Turkey: In 2007, some 85,000 forensic reports were requested each year by courts and district prosecutors. However, as there were only 300 forensic medical experts in the whole country, the majority of these reports were prepared by physicians who were not experts. Studies had established that many of the problems relating to documentation of torture were partially caused by lack of awareness and competence in the detection of signs of physical or psychological torture. Similarly, many of the judges and prosecutors were found to be lacking in training and skills Training in Turkey: in the words of Sebnem Korur Fincancı, Human Rights Foundation of Turkey The project started in 2007, but we could only start trainings at the end of 2009, and the project would end at 2010 in May. So we only had six months to have the trainings, but we could manage. However, the schedule was extremely tight. Everybody, all the trainers, sacrificed everything: all their work, all their responsibilities and even their family members in a way. In five to six months, we held 120 trainings in 30 cities. Sometimes my colleagues or I would wake up in the morning not remembering which city we were in, what we should do, which day in the training we are, or if we were continuing with a training or just starting a new training. But, according to feedback from the participants, all the trainings were truly a success. Afterwards, we were excited to see that the participants continued in other trainings. Many of them organised their own trainings in many cities after this project. This was also very important because these people didn’t have the responsibility to organise trainings on their own or in their own regions. But they just believed that it was their responsibility to combat torture after these trainings. That meant we had achieved a change in the behaviour and the attitude of these people. To change minds is not very easy of course. We had some sessions to build empathy. It was very important because, particularly in Turkey, with my colleagues and with judges and prosecutors as well, they mix empathy with sympathy very frequently. And in order to deny sympathising — because then they would just lose their impartiality — they would also deny empathy. But empathybuilding exercises during these trainings were very helpful, as they realised really what empathy means. Empathy really never has anything to do with impartiality. You don’t lose your impartiality when you empathise with some person; it is about understanding that person, understanding that pain, understanding that suffering. So the participants, step by step, learned about it, which helped a lot for the medical doctors and physicians. Getting the evidence: Countering torture through medico-legal documentation 5