Working Class Action
Turkish Hunger Strikes Continue
First published in Fourthwrite Magazine, Issue 6
by Andy Robertson
In the aftermath of the capture of key members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leadership, the Turkish State, sensing victory over the country’s revolutionary forces, increased its attacks on those continuing their resistance to it’s rule. As in most political conflicts, principal arenas of struggle are the prisons where the state incarcerates its enemies. As part of its drive to finally break the back of the opposition, the Turkish government is now attempting to introduce new so-called F-type prisons with their notorious isolation cells. Known to revolutionaries as ‘Death Cells’, these prisons, if successfully implemented fully, will greatly aid the torture and abuse of political prisoners.
First used in the self-styled ‘humanitarian Europe’, most notably Germany and also in the US, the isolation cells are now being used in Turkey. Each cell, measuring 2 x 3 square metres, and painted white function as a means to "establish the authority of the state in the prisons". Existing where the state structure is at its strongest, the isolation cells seek to put its enemies in "prisons within prisons". While most prisons are designed to hold the revolutionary’s body, the isolation cells have been conceived to harness and pacify the mind.
In Turkey therefore, state authority translates as the authority of the fascist state. To the revolutionaries, the message is clear: "accept the ideology of the state, or have no other." Within the death cells, where the white interior causes the eyes to forget their functions and the mind to lack stimulus from an empty world, everything, from eating and drinking to sleeping, reading and exercising are determined by the state and it’s ideology. Cut off from the rest of the world, the revolutionaries are being subjected to continuous torture as their personality, political identity, thoughts, humanity and beliefs come under constant attack.
Beginning as an indefinite hunger strike, involving over a 1000 people on October 20th last year, the protest escalated into a Death Fast on November 19th. These death fast participants are members of the DHKP-C (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party – Front), the TKP-ML (Turkish Communist Party – Marxist Leninist) and the TKIP (Communist Workers Party of Turkey). In the face of being moved into the death cells, the revolutionaries raised a defiant call that: "no matter what, we will not go to those cells alive."
As the resistance escalated, the state, on December 19th, launched a military assault on the protesters in twenty prisons across the country. In a campaign that involved police, military and the notorious ‘Special Team’ of the state security forces, bulldozers were used to tear holes in the prison walls allowing the attackers to enter, firing on prisoners without warning and using smoke, gas and blast bombs. In the face of state violence, the prisoners fought back, in some prisons the resistance lasting several days as thirty prisoners and two of the attackers were killed. Outside the prisons, this bloody offensive was met with protests that soon erupted into violent confrontations with police and Grey Wolf fascists in Ankara, Istanbul, Adana, Izmir and several other cities. These clashes were complimented by military actions carried out by the prisoners’ comrades, the police and counter-gangs of the Grey Wolves and Hizbollah being specifically targeted.
Throughout the operation, journalists were forbidden to come within a mile of the prisons, the State Security Court issuing a decree banning "excessive" coverage of the attacks and the related street protests. The brutal attacks, named "Operation Compassion" were justified on the grounds that the prisons had become "independent fiefs" of the prisoners, the state’s actions restoring order.
The majority of Turkey’s political prisoners have been jailed under the state’s "anti-terrorism" laws, which facilitate the detention of individuals, for membership of one of numerous banned organisations. Proof of such affiliation can be the mere possession of a leaflet. As the prisoners mourned their losses, the state began releasing thousands of non-political prisoners under an amnesty program beginning the process of forcibly moving the prisoners into the F-type prisons and Special Medical Units. During this transferral, many hunger strikers were forcibly injected with vitamin B1. This is reported to stave off starvation while not preventing the body’s physical deterioration. Force-feeding has also been used on those death-fasters that have lost consciousness. This has led to 37 of the prisoners suffering memory loss, in some cases forgetting that they are in prison and on hunger strike. These have proved easily manipulated by the state media.
To date, twenty-three of the prison death-fasters have died. Added to this four family members of the prisoners have given their lives in solidarity death-fasts outside the prisons. In the face of the Turkish State’s attempts to smother the hunger strikes in silence, the revolutionaries have maintained a correct line, displaying revolutionary perseverance and an unwavering confidence in the masses continuing to hand their enemies a political and ideological defeat. Forced onto the defensive, but refusing to become victims of the fascist state, the prisoners remain undaunted. From the heart of the regime, they have vowed to destroy, they have raised the defiant call that "either the F-type prisons are closed down or we will all die".
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