NEWS CENTER - A second group will take over the hunger strike, prisoners started on November 27. 

 

The prisons in Turkey is back on the agenda with the hunger strikes one and a half years later.  At the center of the action initiated by PKK and PAJK prisoners, there are some restrictions imposed in prisons due to the Kovid-19 pandemic and the increased violations of rights with the new practices and the reaction against the continued isolation imposed on PKK Leader Abdullah Öcalan.

 

Abdullah Öcalan who was visited by state committees between 2013 and 2015, and the other 3 prisoners, were deprived of their rights to b e visited by their families and attorneys with the end of the solution process.

 

The isolation policy that somehow bended with the hunger strike initiated by Democratic Society Congress (DTK) Co-Chair Leyla Güven on November 7, 2018 and ended when Öcalan was allowed to be visited by his attorneys on the 200th day of the hunger strike, was put back into effect. Upon the growing concern of the society, Öcalan who was allowed to be visited by his attorneys 5 times, was once again allowed to be visited by his brother on March 3, 2020 and he was allowed to a phonecall after 21 years in İmralı prison.

 

While the doors of Imrali are expected to open to his lawyers and his family, on September 23, the Bursa Chief Public Prosecutor's Office banned the visitation rights of Öcalan for 6 months on the grounds of the "Road Map" he prepared in addition to his defense which was sent to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2009 with the perspective of a solution to the Kurdish problem.

 

This decision was the last straw for PKK and PAJK prisoners. As they had announced to the public before, the prisoners started a 5-day rotating hunger strike as of 27 November. The actions that started with the participation of many prisoners in different prisons will be taken over by the second group as of tomorrow (December 2).

 

There is no clear information about the total number of prisoners in which prisons, due to the restriction of lawyer and family visits due to the pandemic.

 

Some of the prisoners who are on hunger strike are as follows: 

 

Hüseyin Koç in Samsun-Vezirköprü Type M Prison; Erkan Bayrak in Urfa Type T Prison; İhsan Bulut and Muzaffer Acu in Van High Security Prison; Lorin İnanç in Bakırköy  Type L Prison; Mehmet Askeri Duman in Elazig No. 1 Penal Execution Institution; Saadet Akın, Necla Yıldız and Arjin Yüksekbag in Ankara-Sincan Women's Closed Prison; Mehmet Emin Ürper, Şükrü Çiçek, Sabah Dayan and Serhat Çağlı in Kırıkkale Type F Closed Prison; Nurcan Aslan, Hatice Kaymak and Fatma Bese in Mersin-Tarsus Type T Closed Women's Prison; Sertaç Kılıçarslan, Ozan Alpkaya and Abdullah Günay in İzmir-Kırıklar Type F Closed Prison; HDP former Diyarbakır Deputy Çağlar Demirel and Seher Orçu in Kocaeli-Kandıra No.1 Type F High Security Prison; Hatice Kaymak, Fatma Befre and Nurcan Aslan in Tarsus Women's Closed Prison; Merve Aydoğan from Kayseri Bünyan Women's Closed Prison.