Türkiye: ‘They treated us like animals’ - Activist recounts detention after Gaza-bound flotilla intercepted.

SHOTLIST ISTANBUL, TÜRKIYE (MAY 2, 2026) 1. (SOUNDBITE) (English) BRITISH ACTIVIST KATY DAVIDSON, SAYING: “So we had an interception which was pretty scary. It took quite a lot of time. It included drones with bright spotlights on us, and then a huge frigate came up alongside our boat, which was a small boat. There was only six people on it. And then they disappeared and we thought we were free, and we made a run for it. But then another boat came alongside us, and it was at my back. I was sitting in the cockpit, and they were shouting at us, and we'd heard over the comms that they'd already taken shots at another boat. And we couldn't quite believe it. We weren't sure it was the Israelis. We didn't know what was going on, because it was so far away from the interception point from last time. We were four days away from Italy, from Sicily. We did not expect it. And basically from behind me, the boat was full of commandos, and they said to us, ‘Get to the front of the boat. Get to the front of the boat.’ And we just sat peacefully, and they insisted, insisted, and then they said, ‘If you don't go to the front of the boat, we will shoot you.’ And that's when my mind just went, ‘What's happening here? We're doing nothing illegal. We're in international waters.’ 2. REPORTER: “Do they have that blue misty haze?” 3. (SOUNDBITE) (English) BRITISH ACTIVIST KATY DAVIDSON, SAYING: “No, not at that point. They were actually quite decent on the boat. They were quite firm, but decent. But as soon as we got to this floating prison, which blew our mind, we were taken away on a rib, and they treated us like animals. We were brought into a makeshift prison, which was built out of shipping containers, barbed razor wire everywhere, walkways all around us with men with guns, and they treated us like animals. We were on foam mattresses that were soaking up water. At night, sometimes they would spray water for it to soak into the people's mattresses, sleeping outside, and there were shipping containers with over 40 people, sometimes more. It's a 40-foot shipping container with 60-plus people, I think, because there was 181 of us in total in there, and they would give us a bit of bread and water, and they were violent, they were aggressive, they were manipulative. Basically, they decided that they were taking SAFE and Tiago, and when that happened, we got really worried, because we know SAFE has a Palestinian passport ID. He's got Barcelona residency, nationality, but we know how vulnerable the Palestinians are in the hands of the Israelis, and essentially, we did not want to leave that boat until we saw them, and everything we tried, we tried to protest, we tried to hold back, we tried to stay on the boat, and they refused, they said, ‘You can leave, or you'll go to Israel to prison,’ and we were, ‘We'll stay, we'll go to Israel, because you haven't shown us these guys are safe.’ It was in international waters, I believe, but I don't, I think so, yeah. Yeah, my call to the international community is everybody stand up because this isn't just going to stop in Palestine, this is going to go worldwide because they are Zionists, and they do not care about anyone apart from themselves. They see us as subhuman compared to them.” ISTANBUL, TÜRKIYE - MAY 2: British activist Katy Davidson, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, has described the moments of her detention by Israeli forces in international waters, saying detainees were "treated like animals" in a makeshift prison built from shipping containers. Speaking to an Anadolu correspondent in Istanbul on Saturday, Davidson recounted the interception of her small vessel, which carried only six people, by Israeli forces. "We had an interception which was pretty scary," Davidson said. "It took quite a lot of time. It included drones with bright spotlights on us, and then a huge frigate came up alongside our boat." She explained that after the initial vessel disappeared, the activists believed they had escaped, only to be approached by another boat from behind. "We were four days away from Italy, from Sicily. We did not expect it," she said. While the treatment on the boat was "quite firm, but decent," Davidson described dramatically different conditions upon transfer to a detention facility. "As soon as we got to this floating prison, which blew our mind, we were taken away on a rib, and they treated us like animals," she said. According to Davidson, detainees were held in a makeshift prison constructed from shipping containers surrounded by barbed razor wire, with armed guards patrolling walkways. She reported overcrowded conditions, with more than 60 people held in 40-foot shipping containers, and said the total number of detainees reached 181. "We were on foam mat