Turkish Protests Echo Irish Inmates' 1981 Campaign

Hunger Strike Prisoner Death Toll on the Rise
The Star (Ireland) - 7th August 2001
by Michael O Toole

Turkey is in the grip of a hunger strike that has left amost 30 people dead - 20 years after Ireland was thrown into an identical crisis by prisoners refusing their food.

Left-wing and Kurd prisoners in some of Turkey's most notorious jails started a staggered hunger strike campaign last October - and the parallels with the Irish situation in 1981 are striking. Then, IRA and INLA prisoners in the Maze jail refused food in their fight to win political status - they wanted to be classed as prisoners of war and not terrorists or criminals.

Ten men, including IRA leader Bobby Sands, died - and their colleagues eventually won the right to wear their own clothes and associate with other inmates.

The hunger strikes in Turkey, which have led to bitter street violence between the security forces and the supporters of the prisoners, have also centred on inmates' rights.

Some of the inmates are fasting even though they have been released from prison because of ill health. The inmates oppose the governments plan to build 11 of the detested F-type prisons. These prisons do away with large dormitories sleeping 60, and replace them with three-person cells. Inmates are angry at this because it means that they will not be able to meet other prisoners and will be locked up 23 hours a day - in roasting conditions. They also say that the small rooms will make it more likely that they will face ill treatment and torture. Five of the F-type prisons are already in operation - but the protesters are determined no more will open their doors.

Two weeks ago the hunger strikes claimed a 29th life with the death of a 47-year-old inmate who had been paroled in June due to failing health. The dead woman, Sevgi Erdogan, was one of 20 inmates conditionally released from prison that month who continued their hunger strikes in a house in Istanbul.

According to Turkey's Human Rights Foundation, another 180 inmates are still on hunger strike and about 50 have been released from jail over the past few weeks because of their deteriorating health.

Last month a delegation of Irish trade unionists went to Turkey to show solidarity with the hunger strikers. They met some of the inmates who are refusing food and demanded that the Turkish government abandon the F-type prison programme. To date the government has refused to back down.