Reports from Irish members of International Delegation which visited Turkey in June 2001
Republican ex-POWs back Turkish hunger strikers - Interview with Alex McCrory on Delegation to Turkey
The Irish World
July 8th 2001
Irish delegation meets hunger strikers
By Tom Griffin
A member of an Irish delegation which last week visited Turkey in support of political prisoners there has spoken of his sadness after learning of the death of one of the hunger strikers he met during the trip.
Twenty-two-year-old Zehra Kulaksiz died on Friday, June 29, at a house in Istanbul where she had refused food for 221 days in sympathy with prisoners protesting the introduction of new F-type jails. She was the twenty-sixth person to die on the hunger strike. Shortly before her death she had been one of several hunger strikers visited by members of the Irish delegation. "I was talking to her on Tuesday afternoon," said Terry Harkin of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. "It's heartbreaking."
Mr Harkin added that the visitors had been shaken by the experience. "I've never seen courage like it, " he said. "The fact is that those people could have walked away at any stage."
Also on the delegation was Alex McCrory of the Ballymurphy Prisoners' Group and Rory O'Driscoll of the Committee for Struggle against Torture through Isolation (IKM), which organised the visit.
As well as meeting hunger strikers, the group met a former state prosecutor, Netcati Ozdemir, sacked for speaking out about conditions in the Turkish prisons.
The Turkish government is trying to move prisoners to the new F-type prisons, which it says meet European standards and break the influence of political prisoners. The hunger strikers say the new cells isolate prisoners and make them vulnerable to police brutality.
Mr Ozdemir told the Irish group that a recent European Union delegation had been given a false impression of the F-type prisons. He said that new walls had been installed after the delegation left, so that the prisoners would be held in solitary confinement.
On his return, Mr Harkin said he would be lobbying travel agents not to sell holidays to Turkey and Irish people not to visit the country."Given the support the Turkish people gave us in the 1981 hunger strikes, it's incumbent on us not to go on holiday to Turkey and provide the regime with hard currency," he said.
"This is not a party political issue," he added. "It's an issue of political status and any organisation that's ever had political prisoners should be behind it."
Derry Journal
(Date not known - early July)
Derry man visits Turkish 'deathfast' prison: Appeal for Derry solidarity with hunger strikers
by Eamonn Houston
TWENTY YEARS after Derry INLA hungerstrikers Patsy O'Hara and Michael Devine died on hungerstrike, thousands of miles away in Istanbul dozens of political prisoners have already faced a similar fate.
In the first year of the new millennium, one of the ancient forms of political protest is again being used as a last resort to force changes within a system.
Twenty-eight Turks and Kurds, members of anti-government left-wing groups have met their deaths since the 'Deathfast' began in November 2000.
The latest hungerstriker to die last week - 22-year-old Zehra Kulaksiz - had been presented with the Starry Plough flag which flew over the Derry grave of Patsy O'Hara on the 20th anniversary of his death. Just a day later she passed away. She died at home after fasting for 221 days.
A vitamin B and sugar solution is imbibed by the prisoners each day to prolong the length of their fasts. Many of them have lasted over 200 days. Like their counterparts in the North in 1981 they have a steely determination to see their protest through to the bitter end.
A delegation from the IRSP, including Derry man Terry Harkin, have just returned from Istanbul to visit prisoners on the ongoing 'deathfast' over prison conditions. Each person on the fast to the death marks it by wearing a red bandanna.
Now Terry Harkin is urging the people of Derry, with their own experience of a hungerstrike, to weigh in behind the plight of those incarcerated in isolation in Turkish prisons. The best way to hurt a government which tolerates dozens of deaths in its prison institutions is to boycott the country as a holiday destination, Terry says. "These people, men and women are involved in a working class struggle, just like two of Derry's finest young men, Patsy O'Hara and Michael Devine were in 1981. "The Turkish people supported their struggle then and now it is time to give them something back and deprive their government in power of the vital foreign currency which they so desperately need."
Mr. Harkin appealed for local holidaymakers to boycott a country which has a questionable human rights track record and which is currently seeking membership of the European Community.
Several women - following in the footsteps of suffragette Emiline Parkhurst - have joined the death fast. "This is all about human rights and human dignity and any organisation should do anything that they can especially because of the support that many off the Turkish people gave us during our own hunger strike," Terry said.
"In our own areas people should be going into travel agents and tell them to take these holidays off sale.
"Five of these hungerstrikers have died in their own homes having been sent out by the authorities. For these people Derry should do all that they can and they shouldn't be having 'craic' on holiday in a country where this is going on.
"Derry has two of its finest young men buried in the City Cemetery - therefore the city has a massive link with these hungerstrikers in Turkey. We are asking prisoners' families to think about it, and even if it's a case of talking a sister or a brother out of a holiday in Turkey then that's doing something.
"The more foreign currency going into this country the more the authorities are able to persecute," Terry added.
The IRSP have 'black flagged' their Website in solidarity with those on the deathfast in Turkey. The prisoners are protesting against being held in prisons in isolation in institutions called F-types.
Their demands include the abolition of the relatively new 'isolation' prisons and the shelving of draconian anti-terror laws in Turkey.The government in Turkey is extremely influenced by the military and has demonstrated an iron will comparable to that apparent during the Irish fasts in the Thatcher era.
Female prisoners on the death fast today make a personal appeal to 'Journal' readers. Resit Arzu Guler, her sister Ayfer and Serpil Donmez, all young women aged between 19 and 23 gave this message: "Our Death Fast attack against the F-types is not only for the Turkish people, it is for all the world. We cannot separate our struggle from the world's. We know about the struggles of Patsy O'Hara and Michael Devine and we support their cause. We greet you from the depths of our hearts."
Terry Harkin recalled the most poignant moment of his visit: "We were sitting drinking Turkish tea outside one of the death houses. When we looked up the Starry Plough star constellation was right above it."